4 New Messages
Digest #4592
Messages
Tue Jan 1, 2013 6:33 am (PST) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
http://www.nation.com.pk/
The Nation
January 1, 2013
Nato copter violates Pakistani airspace
North Waziristan: A Nato helicopter gunship violated the border limits of Pakistan and flew in the Ghulam Khan area of North Waziristan for about five minutes on Monday, government sources said.
Meanwhile, two mortar shells were also fired from across the Afghan border, which hit Miranshah. No loss of life was, however, reported.
==============================
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The Nation
January 1, 2013
Nato copter violates Pakistani airspace
North Waziristan: A Nato helicopter gunship violated the border limits of Pakistan and flew in the Ghulam Khan area of North Waziristan for about five minutes on Monday, government sources said.
Meanwhile, two mortar shells were also fired from across the Afghan border, which hit Miranshah. No loss of life was, however, reported.
==============================
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Tue Jan 1, 2013 6:58 am (PST) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
http://paktribune.com/news/11-
Pakistan Tribune
Agencies
January 1, 2013
11 NATO tankers gutted in Nangarhar fire
JALALABAD: Nearly a dozen NATO fuel tankers were destroyed in an overnight fire in the eastern province of Nangarhar, officials said on Monday.
The blaze broke out on Sunday evening in a market place near the customs department on the Jalalabad-Torkham highway, police said.
Seven tankers were completely gutted and another four comprehensively damaged in the fire, police spokesman Hazrat Hussain Mashriqiwal told Pajhwok Afghan News.
It took three hours for firefighters to bring under control the situation, he added.
Mohsin, director of Kabul Bahar Transportation Company, said the fire started after a blast in the market.
"There were 11 tankers, seven of them were full of fuel and the two were empty," he said, putting the losses at $1 million.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, claimed responsibility for the fire incident. More than 10 US supply tankers were destroyed in the attack, he said.
==============================
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Pakistan Tribune
Agencies
January 1, 2013
11 NATO tankers gutted in Nangarhar fire
JALALABAD: Nearly a dozen NATO fuel tankers were destroyed in an overnight fire in the eastern province of Nangarhar, officials said on Monday.
The blaze broke out on Sunday evening in a market place near the customs department on the Jalalabad-Torkham highway, police said.
Seven tankers were completely gutted and another four comprehensively damaged in the fire, police spokesman Hazrat Hussain Mashriqiwal told Pajhwok Afghan News.
It took three hours for firefighters to bring under control the situation, he added.
Mohsin, director of Kabul Bahar Transportation Company, said the fire started after a blast in the market.
"There were 11 tankers, seven of them were full of fuel and the two were empty," he said, putting the losses at $1 million.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, claimed responsibility for the fire incident. More than 10 US supply tankers were destroyed in the attack, he said.
==============================
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==============================
Tue Jan 1, 2013 6:58 am (PST) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
http://www.flonnet.com/
Frontline
December 29, 2012-January 11, 2013
Imperial stamp
John Cherian
The West, led by the United States, seems even more determined to effect a regime change in Damascus, despite evidence of the crucial role being played by Al Qaeda-affiliated groups in the ongoing fighting in Syria. In the second week of December, U.S. President Barack Obama recognised the main Syrian opposition coalition group, “the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Groups”, as “the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people”. Britain, France and the Gulf monarchies had already given the Syrian umbrella opposition group the “stamp of legitimacy”.
The Syrian opposition, which is far from united, was arm-twisted by their sponsors — the rich Gulf monarchies and the West — to come together on the same platform, at a meeting in Qatar in November. In another meeting held in Marrakesh, Morocco, in the second week of December, representatives from over 100 countries, including the Gulf monarchies, the U.S., Britain and France, assembled under the “Friends of Syria” banner and reaffirmed their support for the Syrian armed opposition.
President Obama, while bestowing the imperial stamp of recognition on the Syrian opposition, said he expected the parties to act in a more cohesive manner and to “commit themselves to a political transition that respects women’s rights and minority rights”. Washington’s recognition of the opposition coincided with the U.S. State Department’s blacklisting of the Jabhat al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate, which is doing much of the fighting in Syria and has been involved in the suicide attacks that have resulted in the death of hundreds of innocent civilians.
The Al Nusra Front has claimed credit for 40 suicide attacks since November 2011. The U.S. State Department labelled the Al Nusra Front as a “terrorist group” having very close links with Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). A State Department official accused Al Nusra of staging more than 600 attacks in major city centres all over Syria “in which numerous innocent Syrians have been injured or killed”.
U.S. officials have been saying that radical Islamists are planning to take control of the opposition. The West has tried to rectify matters by restructuring the command of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA). The new command structure includes senior figures who have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood but are people with whom the West hopes it “can do business”. However, many rebel fighters have rejected the new military command imposed on them by the West. Muslim Brotherhood officials in Syria told the Western media that the terrorist label given to Al Nusra was unjustified and that the “only terrorist in Syria was Assad”.
“Islamists in control”
The fact of the matter, according to most observers, is that the Islamists are already in control and are also doing the bulk of the fighting. Yet, the West has found it opportune to give the motley opposition group the stamp of legitimacy along with even more funding and sophisticated arms. The Obama administration, it seems, has not learned any lessons from the recent Benghazi episode. In Libya, the Islamist groups armed and funded by the West played a crucial role in the overthrow of the government led by Muammar Qaddafi. It was one such group that was responsible for the assassination of the U.S. envoy to Libya. Al Nusra, although it now figures in Washington’s terror list, is a member of the rebel Syrian National Coalition that the U.S. has recognised.
The recognition has also been interpreted as an “open declaration of war” against Syria by the West. Many North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) countries have pledged to supply more heavy weapons and trainers to the rebel groups. There are reports that the U.S. is on the verge of supplying weapons like the SA-7 missiles for the first time. The missile can shoot down planes. Almost on cue, the opposition fighters declared in the second week of December that Damascus International Airport was a legitimate military target and that civilian planes should no longer fly to the Syrian capital.
“Psychological warfare”
Patriot missiles supplied by the U.S. and its allies are on the verge of being deployed on Turkey’s border with Syria. The Syrian government described the move as part of the “psychological warfare” the West was carrying out against it and stressed that it would not impact its determination to wipe out the terror groups. All this seems to be a prelude to the establishment of a “no-fly zone” over parts of Syria. The Patriot missiles are to be deployed ostensibly to stop incoming missiles, but their real purpose seems to be to deny the Syrian Air Force the ability to fly in the northern part of the country. This will in effect create a no-fly zone where the rebel groups can operate in relative freedom. Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Alexander Grushko, criticised the deployment of Patriot missiles on Syria’s borders. He said it was proof that NATO “was getting involved in the conflict after all” on the pretext of “provocations or some
incidents on the Turkey-Syria border”.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expressed “surprise” over Washington’s official recognition of the Syrian opposition. He said Washington was apparently betting on a military victory for the rebels. Lavrov went on to add that the Obama administration had seemingly reneged on the road map agreed to earlier in the year in Geneva, which had envisaged a negotiated end to the conflict. As of now, the key Western countries involved in the regime change mission, like the U.S., France and the United Kingdom, have said they will not be putting “boots on the ground” in Syria. They will instead continue training the armed groups in Turkey. French papers have reported that France has sent military officers into Syria to assess the situation on the ground. “The main task was to know who controls the battlegrounds around Damascus”, Le Figaro reported. In any case, blatant military intervention inside Syria, without United Nations authorisation,
will be difficult to sell to the international community.
Chemical weapons
Before giving formal recognition to the rebels, Washington raised the bogey of the Syrian government’s imminent use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) on its own people. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said a desperate government in Damascus could resort to chemical weapons onslaughts to save itself, while Obama sanctimoniously warned of a “red line” on chemical weapons, saying that its use would not be tolerated. The Western media were full of stories of how the government in Damascus was preparing to wage “chemical warfare” on its own people. The stories were sought to be bolstered by references to the 1982 massacre in the Syrian city of Hama where more than 10,000 people died when the army put down an armed rebellion. The stories appearing in the Western media alleged that the Syrian government used chemical weapons at that time. Western reporters who were on the ground then, like the veteran correspondent Robert Fisk, have said that
there was no truth in these allegations. Fisk said Syrian troops had resorted to heavy-handed measures in Hama after the Muslim Brothers briefly took over the city and massacred government sympathisers and their families.
Allegations that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of unleashing WMDs on his own people were a prelude to the invasion of Iraq. A chemical weapons expert, Jean Pascal Zanders, senior research fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies, has said that the Syrian chemical weapons threat “is being ratcheted up to justify military intervention in the not-too-distant future”. The Syrian government, on its part, has pledged that it will never, under any circumstance, use chemical weapons on its own people. At the same time, Damascus has warned the international community that the Al Nusra-led militants have seized a factory, the Saudi-Syrian Chemicals Co., near the city of Safira and they now may have the ability to engage in chemical warfare and put the blame on the government.
Human tragedy
The insurgency, fuelled mainly by West and its Gulf allies, has already claimed the lives of over 40,000 people. Half a million Syrians have become refugees. The prices of essential goods have escalated dramatically and hunger stalks a land that was until recently self-sufficient in food. The state-run factories producing bread have been pillaged by the rebels in cities like Aleppo. Half of Syria’s 88 public hospitals have been damaged by the fighting, leading to shortages of life-saving drugs and essential medicines like insulin. Pharmaceutical factories that met 90 per cent of the country’s drug needs now produce only one-third of what they were producing until last year. Many of the factories were directly targeted by the opposition fighters. The other factor that has led to an acute shortage of medicines is the punitive economic sanctions imposed by the West, which prevent the import of raw materials.
These developments have only made the average Syrian even more sceptical about the armed rebel groups that have descended on the country like locusts. According to reports, the support for President Bashar al-Assad among the common people remains steadfast. Even those opposed to the government are having second thoughts about the opposition. Mohammed Zein, a 64-year-old vegetable vendor, told the Al Jazeera channel: “Our country is being destroyed. If this is revolution, I don’t want it. I have to stress that I am not a supporter of the regime because they used to oppress us. But now we are being oppressed a hundred times more.”
According to the British paper Daily Telegraph, the majority of the people in Damascus are still solidly behind Assad. “One of the reasons that Bashar al-Assad has not been toppled like the Arab Spring dictators of Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen is that he has a strong base of support,” a recent article in the paper stated.
The military situation, according to a senior Syrian diplomat based in New Delhi, is still very manageable. He said the government so far had only deployed less than 10 per cent of the armed forces to combat the insurgency. Another senior Arab diplomat, also based in Delhi, said the government in Damascus would face no serious threat for another two years. “However, public alienation will increase if the fighting continues beyond that period,” he predicted.
Many governments in the region are still firm in the belief that there is no alternative to the present government in Syria at the present juncture. Most observers believe that if the government in Damascus falls, the entire region will implode into a cycle of sectarian violence.
==============================
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/
Stop NATO website and articles:
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==============================
Frontline
December 29, 2012-January 11, 2013
Imperial stamp
John Cherian
The West, led by the United States, seems even more determined to effect a regime change in Damascus, despite evidence of the crucial role being played by Al Qaeda-affiliated groups in the ongoing fighting in Syria. In the second week of December, U.S. President Barack Obama recognised the main Syrian opposition coalition group, “the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Groups”, as “the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people”. Britain, France and the Gulf monarchies had already given the Syrian umbrella opposition group the “stamp of legitimacy”.
The Syrian opposition, which is far from united, was arm-twisted by their sponsors — the rich Gulf monarchies and the West — to come together on the same platform, at a meeting in Qatar in November. In another meeting held in Marrakesh, Morocco, in the second week of December, representatives from over 100 countries, including the Gulf monarchies, the U.S., Britain and France, assembled under the “Friends of Syria” banner and reaffirmed their support for the Syrian armed opposition.
President Obama, while bestowing the imperial stamp of recognition on the Syrian opposition, said he expected the parties to act in a more cohesive manner and to “commit themselves to a political transition that respects women’s rights and minority rights”. Washington’s recognition of the opposition coincided with the U.S. State Department’s blacklisting of the Jabhat al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate, which is doing much of the fighting in Syria and has been involved in the suicide attacks that have resulted in the death of hundreds of innocent civilians.
The Al Nusra Front has claimed credit for 40 suicide attacks since November 2011. The U.S. State Department labelled the Al Nusra Front as a “terrorist group” having very close links with Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). A State Department official accused Al Nusra of staging more than 600 attacks in major city centres all over Syria “in which numerous innocent Syrians have been injured or killed”.
U.S. officials have been saying that radical Islamists are planning to take control of the opposition. The West has tried to rectify matters by restructuring the command of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA). The new command structure includes senior figures who have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood but are people with whom the West hopes it “can do business”. However, many rebel fighters have rejected the new military command imposed on them by the West. Muslim Brotherhood officials in Syria told the Western media that the terrorist label given to Al Nusra was unjustified and that the “only terrorist in Syria was Assad”.
“Islamists in control”
The fact of the matter, according to most observers, is that the Islamists are already in control and are also doing the bulk of the fighting. Yet, the West has found it opportune to give the motley opposition group the stamp of legitimacy along with even more funding and sophisticated arms. The Obama administration, it seems, has not learned any lessons from the recent Benghazi episode. In Libya, the Islamist groups armed and funded by the West played a crucial role in the overthrow of the government led by Muammar Qaddafi. It was one such group that was responsible for the assassination of the U.S. envoy to Libya. Al Nusra, although it now figures in Washington’s terror list, is a member of the rebel Syrian National Coalition that the U.S. has recognised.
The recognition has also been interpreted as an “open declaration of war” against Syria by the West. Many North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) countries have pledged to supply more heavy weapons and trainers to the rebel groups. There are reports that the U.S. is on the verge of supplying weapons like the SA-7 missiles for the first time. The missile can shoot down planes. Almost on cue, the opposition fighters declared in the second week of December that Damascus International Airport was a legitimate military target and that civilian planes should no longer fly to the Syrian capital.
“Psychological warfare”
Patriot missiles supplied by the U.S. and its allies are on the verge of being deployed on Turkey’s border with Syria. The Syrian government described the move as part of the “psychological warfare” the West was carrying out against it and stressed that it would not impact its determination to wipe out the terror groups. All this seems to be a prelude to the establishment of a “no-fly zone” over parts of Syria. The Patriot missiles are to be deployed ostensibly to stop incoming missiles, but their real purpose seems to be to deny the Syrian Air Force the ability to fly in the northern part of the country. This will in effect create a no-fly zone where the rebel groups can operate in relative freedom. Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Alexander Grushko, criticised the deployment of Patriot missiles on Syria’s borders. He said it was proof that NATO “was getting involved in the conflict after all” on the pretext of “provocations or some
incidents on the Turkey-Syria border”.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expressed “surprise” over Washington’s official recognition of the Syrian opposition. He said Washington was apparently betting on a military victory for the rebels. Lavrov went on to add that the Obama administration had seemingly reneged on the road map agreed to earlier in the year in Geneva, which had envisaged a negotiated end to the conflict. As of now, the key Western countries involved in the regime change mission, like the U.S., France and the United Kingdom, have said they will not be putting “boots on the ground” in Syria. They will instead continue training the armed groups in Turkey. French papers have reported that France has sent military officers into Syria to assess the situation on the ground. “The main task was to know who controls the battlegrounds around Damascus”, Le Figaro reported. In any case, blatant military intervention inside Syria, without United Nations authorisation,
will be difficult to sell to the international community.
Chemical weapons
Before giving formal recognition to the rebels, Washington raised the bogey of the Syrian government’s imminent use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) on its own people. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said a desperate government in Damascus could resort to chemical weapons onslaughts to save itself, while Obama sanctimoniously warned of a “red line” on chemical weapons, saying that its use would not be tolerated. The Western media were full of stories of how the government in Damascus was preparing to wage “chemical warfare” on its own people. The stories were sought to be bolstered by references to the 1982 massacre in the Syrian city of Hama where more than 10,000 people died when the army put down an armed rebellion. The stories appearing in the Western media alleged that the Syrian government used chemical weapons at that time. Western reporters who were on the ground then, like the veteran correspondent Robert Fisk, have said that
there was no truth in these allegations. Fisk said Syrian troops had resorted to heavy-handed measures in Hama after the Muslim Brothers briefly took over the city and massacred government sympathisers and their families.
Allegations that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of unleashing WMDs on his own people were a prelude to the invasion of Iraq. A chemical weapons expert, Jean Pascal Zanders, senior research fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies, has said that the Syrian chemical weapons threat “is being ratcheted up to justify military intervention in the not-too-distant future”. The Syrian government, on its part, has pledged that it will never, under any circumstance, use chemical weapons on its own people. At the same time, Damascus has warned the international community that the Al Nusra-led militants have seized a factory, the Saudi-Syrian Chemicals Co., near the city of Safira and they now may have the ability to engage in chemical warfare and put the blame on the government.
Human tragedy
The insurgency, fuelled mainly by West and its Gulf allies, has already claimed the lives of over 40,000 people. Half a million Syrians have become refugees. The prices of essential goods have escalated dramatically and hunger stalks a land that was until recently self-sufficient in food. The state-run factories producing bread have been pillaged by the rebels in cities like Aleppo. Half of Syria’s 88 public hospitals have been damaged by the fighting, leading to shortages of life-saving drugs and essential medicines like insulin. Pharmaceutical factories that met 90 per cent of the country’s drug needs now produce only one-third of what they were producing until last year. Many of the factories were directly targeted by the opposition fighters. The other factor that has led to an acute shortage of medicines is the punitive economic sanctions imposed by the West, which prevent the import of raw materials.
These developments have only made the average Syrian even more sceptical about the armed rebel groups that have descended on the country like locusts. According to reports, the support for President Bashar al-Assad among the common people remains steadfast. Even those opposed to the government are having second thoughts about the opposition. Mohammed Zein, a 64-year-old vegetable vendor, told the Al Jazeera channel: “Our country is being destroyed. If this is revolution, I don’t want it. I have to stress that I am not a supporter of the regime because they used to oppress us. But now we are being oppressed a hundred times more.”
According to the British paper Daily Telegraph, the majority of the people in Damascus are still solidly behind Assad. “One of the reasons that Bashar al-Assad has not been toppled like the Arab Spring dictators of Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen is that he has a strong base of support,” a recent article in the paper stated.
The military situation, according to a senior Syrian diplomat based in New Delhi, is still very manageable. He said the government so far had only deployed less than 10 per cent of the armed forces to combat the insurgency. Another senior Arab diplomat, also based in Delhi, said the government in Damascus would face no serious threat for another two years. “However, public alienation will increase if the fighting continues beyond that period,” he predicted.
Many governments in the region are still firm in the belief that there is no alternative to the present government in Syria at the present juncture. Most observers believe that if the government in Damascus falls, the entire region will implode into a cycle of sectarian violence.
==============================
Stop NATO e-mail list home page with archives and search engine:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/
Stop NATO website and articles:
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.co
To subscribe for individual e-mails or the daily digest, unsubscribe, and otherwise change subscription status:
stopnato-subscribe@yahoogroups
==============================
Tue Jan 1, 2013 4:01 pm (PST) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
http://www.todayszaman.com/
Today's Zaman
January 1, 2013
US House of Representatives approves transfer of missile frigates to Turkey
The US House of Representatives has approved a bill seeking permission to give guided missile frigates to Turkey, Thailand and Mexico.
The bill was submitted to and passed by the House of Representatives on Monday. It authorizes President Barack Obama to grant the US military permission to provide guided missile frigates to these three countries.
Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, introduced the bill to the House on Dec. 11, 2012.
The motion requires Senate approval before it will come into effect. If Obama acts on the motion, Turkey will be given two guided missile frigates, the USS Halyburton (FFG-40) and the USS Thach (FFG-43).
During her speech to the House of Representatives, Ros-Lehtinen underlined NATO member Turkey's critical role with regards to the Syrian conflict and its joint efforts with the US in fighting pirates in Somalia and Aden. She said to grant the frigates to Turkey is a must.
The bill, however, has elicited a harsh reaction from the Washington-based Hellenic American Leadership Council (HALC), which lobbied to prevent the provision of the naval vessels to Turkey.
The council stated that the bill is another example of the US giving preferential treatment to Turkey in defense deals, adding that the bill should not pass and the US should stop this preferential treatment.
Turkey seeks Sidewinder air-to-air missiles from US
Turkey has also asked to purchase 117 air-to-air missiles and the associated equipment from the US to strengthen its air defense capabilities.
A statement released by the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency on Dec. 24 said the agency notified Congress recently of a possible sale to Turkey of Sidewinder missiles and the associated equipment, parts, training and logistical support at an estimated cost of $140 million.
Turkey requested the sale of 117 AIM-9X-2 Sidewinder Block II All-Up-Round Missiles, six AIM-9X-2 Block II Tactical Guidance Units, six dummy air training missiles, 130 LAU-129 Guided Missile Launchers, containers, missile support and testing equipment, provisions, spare parts, personnel training and training equipment, publications and technical data and other logistical support.
The statement reiterated that Turkey is a partner of the US in ensuring peace and stability in the region and that it is vital to US national interests to assist its NATO ally in developing and maintaining strong and ready self-defense capabilities that will contribute to an acceptable military balance in the area.
The agency assured Congress that the proposed sale of these weapons to Turkey will not alter the basic military balance in the region.
According to US law, the administration needs to notify Congress of the sale of arms to other countries and seek authorization. If the proposed sale is to a NATO member country, Congress has 15 days to reject the sale or it will be automatically authorized.
Turkey had earlier sought to buy armed drones from the US to be used in its fight against [the] Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).., but the request was controversial and some in Congress rejected the sale of the aircraft to Turkey, possibly due to Ankara's deteriorating relations with Israel, a close US ally.
Today's Zaman
January 1, 2013
US House of Representatives approves transfer of missile frigates to Turkey
The US House of Representatives has approved a bill seeking permission to give guided missile frigates to Turkey, Thailand and Mexico.
The bill was submitted to and passed by the House of Representatives on Monday. It authorizes President Barack Obama to grant the US military permission to provide guided missile frigates to these three countries.
Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, introduced the bill to the House on Dec. 11, 2012.
The motion requires Senate approval before it will come into effect. If Obama acts on the motion, Turkey will be given two guided missile frigates, the USS Halyburton (FFG-40) and the USS Thach (FFG-43).
During her speech to the House of Representatives, Ros-Lehtinen underlined NATO member Turkey's critical role with regards to the Syrian conflict and its joint efforts with the US in fighting pirates in Somalia and Aden. She said to grant the frigates to Turkey is a must.
The bill, however, has elicited a harsh reaction from the Washington-based Hellenic American Leadership Council (HALC), which lobbied to prevent the provision of the naval vessels to Turkey.
The council stated that the bill is another example of the US giving preferential treatment to Turkey in defense deals, adding that the bill should not pass and the US should stop this preferential treatment.
Turkey seeks Sidewinder air-to-air missiles from US
Turkey has also asked to purchase 117 air-to-air missiles and the associated equipment from the US to strengthen its air defense capabilities.
A statement released by the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency on Dec. 24 said the agency notified Congress recently of a possible sale to Turkey of Sidewinder missiles and the associated equipment, parts, training and logistical support at an estimated cost of $140 million.
Turkey requested the sale of 117 AIM-9X-2 Sidewinder Block II All-Up-Round Missiles, six AIM-9X-2 Block II Tactical Guidance Units, six dummy air training missiles, 130 LAU-129 Guided Missile Launchers, containers, missile support and testing equipment, provisions, spare parts, personnel training and training equipment, publications and technical data and other logistical support.
The statement reiterated that Turkey is a partner of the US in ensuring peace and stability in the region and that it is vital to US national interests to assist its NATO ally in developing and maintaining strong and ready self-defense capabilities that will contribute to an acceptable military balance in the area.
The agency assured Congress that the proposed sale of these weapons to Turkey will not alter the basic military balance in the region.
According to US law, the administration needs to notify Congress of the sale of arms to other countries and seek authorization. If the proposed sale is to a NATO member country, Congress has 15 days to reject the sale or it will be automatically authorized.
Turkey had earlier sought to buy armed drones from the US to be used in its fight against [the] Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).., but the request was controversial and some in Congress rejected the sale of the aircraft to Turkey, possibly due to Ankara's deteriorating relations with Israel, a close US ally.
