Turkey will push US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week to follow through on promises to help eradicate Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq but experts say her hands are tied.
Ms Rice arrives in Ankara on Friday for talks with Turkey's leaders, before going to Istanbul for a meeting of Iraq's neighbors and major powers that is also expected to be dominated by tensions between Iraq and Turkey.
"I can't imagine what she is going to be able to do in terms of pulling a rabbit out of the hat that would enable her to leave claiming that some progress had been made," said Mark Parris, a former US ambassador to Turkey.
Former US ambassador to Turkey Mark Parris
Turkey has threatened a military incursion into northern Iraq, from where Kurdish rebels have launched attacks, but has so far heeded Washington's call for restraint.
Washington fears an incursion by Turkey - a Nato ally and key conduit for supplies to US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan - would further destabilize an already volatile region.
Ms Rice has promised unspecified "concrete action" and is prodding Iraq's government, particularly the Kurdish regional authorities in northern Iraq, to curb the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, by closing its bases and arresting leaders.
"We are looking to the Iraqi government to act, to act to prevent terrorist attacks, and ultimately to act to dismantle that terror group that's operating on their territory," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
But while Ms Rice has promised US action and urged the Iraqis to do more, defence officials have made clear there is no appetite for US military action against the PKK.
Ms Rice's visit coincides with increasingly anti-US sentiment in Turkey and residual anger after a resolution passed by a US congressional committee this month that called the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks a genocide.
Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is set to meet President George W. Bush in Washington next week and Ms Rice's sessions in Turkey are aimed at smoothing out problems before then.