TEL AVIV, Turkey, March 6 (UPI) -- Turkey is trying to form a committee comprising Turkish, Jordanian and Palestinian experts to check an Israeli dig near the Mosque of al-Aksa in Jerusalem.
Israeli officials said the dig is a salvage excavation of a ramp that partly collapsed during a snowstorm. It wants to build a sturdy bridge there and said the dig will not even reach the wall that surrounds the al-Aksa.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan last month hosted Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Ankara. Olmert produced pictures of the dig, but Erdogan maintained they did not fully satisfy him that no damage would befall the mosque. Muslims consider the al-Aksa their third holiest site in the world. The Jews consider the mount their holiest site.
Erdogan won Olmert's consent to receive a delegation, headed by Turkey's ambassador to Israel, to check the dig. Erdogan now seems to be trying to raise the committee's status by adding Palestinian and Jordanian experts. In the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement, Israel undertook to respect "the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem." Press reports said that Jordan was concerned over Turkey's new encroaches and Turkish officials said that talks with Jordan are continuing, the newspaper reported.
Turkish Daily News said that a Palestinian delegation came to Ankara last week to discuss the situation.
