DHAKA: German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned Sunday that the bloody conflict in Iraq could quickly spin into a regional ‘proxy war’.

Steinmeier, speaking to the Welt am Sonntag newspaper, called on Turkey, the Gulf Arab states and Iran to do their part to stabilise Iraq.

‘We have to prevent a proxy war of the regional powers breaking out on Iraqi soil,’ he said, reports The Straits Times.

Steinmeier said these countries ‘could not have an interest in, beyond Syria, an enormous, ungoverned space developing in their backyards as a hotbed of mercenary groups, Islamists of every stripe, and terrorists’.

BDST: 1902 HRS, JUNE 15, 2014