Turkey's Erdogan says Iraq cannot handle Mosul assault aloneAnkara, 15 October 2016 (MIA) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that Iraq could not deal alone with driving Islamic State from the city of Mosul and that the presence of Turkish forces in a nearby military camp was an insurance against attacks on Turkey, Reuters reports.
Turkey has been locked in a row with Iraq's central government about the presence of Turkish troops at the Bashiqa camp in northern Iraq, and over who should take part in the planned U.S.-backed assault on Mosul.
"We won't let Mosul be given to Daesh (Islamic State) or any other terrorist organization. They say Iraq's central government needs to approve this but the Iraqi central government should first deal with their own problems," Erdogan said.
"Why did you let Daesh enter Iraq, why did you let Daesh enter Mosul? They were almost going to come to Baghdad, where are you, the central government of Iraq?" he said in a speech at a ceremony in the Black Sea town of Rize, broadcast live on TV.
Turkey fears that Shi'ite militias, which the Iraqi army has relied on in the past, will be used in the planned Mosul offensive, expected to start this month, stoking sectarian unrest and triggering an exodus of refugees.
Turkish soldiers have been training Sunni Muslim and allied Kurdish peshmerga units at the Bashiqa camp near Mosul, and want them to be involved in the assault. Baghdad objects to the Turkish military presence there.
"Nobody should talk about our Bashiqa base. We will stay there. Bashiqa is our insurance against any kind of terrorist activities in Turkey," Erdogan said.
The United States has said any foreign forces in Iraq should have the approval of the Baghdad government. ik/15:46
###
NATO, Russia overshadow Montenegro vote
Podgorica, 16 October 2016 (MIA) - Montenegro's ruling party faced a tough test in national elections on Sunday, hoping its promise to bring the country into NATO and closer to the European Union will outweigh opposition allegations of corruption, Reuters reports.
Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, 54, has presented the vote as a choice between continuing Western integration under his Democratic Party of Socialists or being reduced to a "Russian colony" under the opposition.
But the opposition say his regular accusations that they are funded by Moscow are false and a smokescreen to cover for the culture of cronyism and organized crime that they say he has allowed to flourish over his quarter-century of dominance.
NATO invited the tiny Balkan country of 620,000 to join last year, partly out of concern at Russian influence in Montenegro, which has strong cultural and commercial links to its traditional Orthodox Christian ally.
Supporters of the move say it will bring greater security and prosperity. But it remains divisive - NATO bombed Montenegro when the alliance intervened in 1999 to end a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo by Serbia, with which Montenegro was then in a state union.
A lack of reliable polls makes the election hard to call, but long-term allies have deserted Djukanovic, suggesting that the message from opposition parties may have traction.
Voter Vojislav Grujovic, a stocky manual laborer in his 50s, declined to say who he had chosen on Sunday. "I have voted without worries, because everyone pledged a better life and prosperity ... We can't lose," he joked.
The former Yugoslav republic's economy has grown at a brisk 3.2 percent a year for the past decade, thanks mainly to foreign investment, much of it from Russia as well as China and Italy, targeting energy, mining and tourism in a country famed for its spectacular mountains and sea coast.
At an opposition rally in the capital Podgorica on Saturday, hundreds of backers of the Democratic Front (DF), an alliance of pro-Serb and pro-Western parties, waved Serb, Russian and Montenegrin flags, chanting their campaign slogan "Us or Him".
"Djukanovic, step down peacefully on Sunday if you love Montenegro," said Nebojsa Medojevic, a pro-Western politician and one of the DF's leaders.
Polling stations close at 1800 GMT, with first partial results expected an hour later.
|