During a meeting at the White House, Bush announced a new three-way military partnership grouping the United States, Turkey and Iraq to improve the sharing of intelligence and said Washington was considering additional steps.

"We understand there's transit issues at airports. We understand that there's issues with money," Bush said. "We're taking some steps along those lines."

But "step one is to make sure that our intelligence sharing is good," Bush said as he and Erdogan, who had demanded "concrete" US steps against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, met at the White House.

"Faulty intelligence means that we can't solve the problem. Good, sound intelligence, delivered on a real-time basis, using modern technology, will make it much easier to deal effectively" with the PKK, said Bush.