ISTANBUL: Nato member Turkey has agreed to lift its veto on non-military cooperation between the alliance and Israel which it imposed over a deadly raid on a Turkish aid ship to Gaza in 2010, a diplomat said yesterday. Ankara took the retaliatory measure after the Israeli army stormed the ship carrying humanitarian aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip while it was in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea, leaving nine Turks dead.
The decision to renew Nato links came at a December 4 meeting in Brussels of the 28-member alliance on a proposal by its Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the diplomat said.
In return, several Nato allies of Israel agreed to drop a veto against cooperating with Turkey-friendly countries notably in the Arab world. Turkey will agree to Israeli involvement in certain Nato activities but will maintain its ban on joint military manoeuvres, and Ankara reserves the right to bar activities with Israel on its own soil. The agreement comes after Nato agreed early this month to deploy Patriot anti-aircraft missiles along the Turkish border with Syria. Turkey’s relations with its former ally Israel deteriorated sharply after the Gaza ship raid.
Bombs kill four in Iraq
BAGHDAD: Three separate bomb attacks killed a member of the Kurdish peshmerga security forces and three construction workers in Iraq yesterday, officers and doctors said.
A bomb blast in an under-construction house in the town of Mishahada, north of Baghdad, killed the workers and wounded another, a police captain and a doctor said. AFP
