Brussels, Belgium ? Belgium offered a compromise Saturday to end a bitter dispute within the NATO alliance over providing military aid to Turkey in advance of a possible war against Iraq.

Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said Belgium, France and Germany would endorse a U.S. proposal for such help if NATO would make clear the aid was defensive in nature and must not be seen as making the alliance a participant in war preparations against Iraq.

NATO called an urgent session of the ambassadors of its 19 member states for today to discuss the proposal.

Verhofstadt said his government had been consulting with France and Germany on language that would let the three countries drop their vetoes against plans to deploy early warning aircraft, missile defenses and anti biochemical units to Turkey, the only NATO country bordering Iraq.

The thrust of the compromise was to “avoid above all that this decision is a first step in a buildup to war,” Verhofstadt said.

The refusal of France, Belgium and Germany to endorse any military planning for Turkey — which has requested assistance from its fellow allies — has plunged NATO into its deepest crisis since the Cold War ended.

Until now, aid for Turkey has been discussed by all 19 NATO nations. Today’s meeting, however, will be one of the Defense Planning Committee in which France does not participate. France only attends political discussions since leaving NATO’s integrated military command structure in the late 1960s.

Germany, France and Belgium all have said in the past month that sending military hardware to Turkey would undercut efforts to find a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis.

The other 16 allies argued that withholding support planning for Turkey’s defense only would erode NATO’s core credibility and send the wrong signal to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Verhofstadt said under his compromise, the NATO allies would have to “make it explicitly clear that (aid for Turkey) does not imply participation of NATO in a military operation against Iraq.”

Also, aid for Turkey must be defensive in nature and the allies must commit themselves to a “permanent monitoring” of the Iraq debate in the U.N. Security Council.

Verhofstadt comments followed a day of hectic behind-the-scenes diplomatic activities in European capitals attempting to de-escalate the crisis at NATO, which has seriously deteriorated trans-Atlantic relations.

A senior diplomatic source said earlier in the day that the allies were working on a statement reaffirming the alliance’s “solidarity and determination to stick to its obligations” to Turkey.