Tag Archives: NATO

Mattis looking at ways to bring Russia into compliance with arms control treaty

Mattis looking at ways to bring Russia into compliance with arms control treaty

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Thursday he had discussed Russia’s violation of an arms control treaty with his NATO counterparts and they were looking at how to bring Moscow into compliance with it.

“We have a firm belief now over several years that the Russians have violated the INF and our effort is to bring Russia back into compliance,” Mattis said, speaking with reporters during a meeting of NATO defense ministers.

U.S. officials have said Russia has deployed a cruise missile despite complaints by Washington that it violates the arms control treaty banning ground-based, U.S. and Russian intermediate-range missiles.

Russia however, has said in the past that it appears that Washington, now in the midst of a $1 trillion, 30-year modernization of its ageing ballistic missile submarines, bombers and land-based missiles, that was in breach of the same treaty.

“Many of the nations already have their own evidence of what Russia has been up to and we have been in active discussions amongst ourselves on the issue,” Mattis said.

He added that the United States and NATO would be engaging with Russia to try and resolve the issue.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Robin Emmott; editing by Mark Heinrich)

EU to sign joint defense pact in show of post-Brexit unity

EU to sign joint defense pact in show of post-Brexit unity

By Andrea Shalal and Robin Emmott

BERLIN/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – At least 20 countries in the European Union will sign up to a new defense pact next week, promoted by France and Germany, to fund and develop joint military hardware in a show of unity following Britain’s decision to quit the bloc.

After years of spending cutbacks in Europe and a heavy reliance on the United States through the NATO alliance, France and Germany hope the accord, to be signed on Nov. 13 in Brussels, will tie nations into tighter defense collaboration covering troops and weapons.

The Permanent Structured Cooperation, or PESCO, could be the biggest leap in EU defense policy in decades and may go some way to matching the bloc’s economic and trade prowess with a more powerful military.

But differences remain between Paris and Berlin over what countries legally bound by the pact should do, EU diplomats said.

France wanted a core group of governments to bring money and military assets to PESCO as well as a willingness to intervene abroad. Germany has sought to broaden the pact to make it inclusive, which some experts say could make it less effective.

“This has to bring about a higher level of commitment if it is going to work,” said a EU official, describing PESCO as a ‘defense marriage’. “The EU already has plenty of forums for discussion,” the official said.

So far France, Germany, Italy, Spain and around 16 other EU countries have pledged to join the pact, which could formally be launched when EU leaders meet in December. Some other members, including Denmark, Portugal, Malta and Ireland, have yet to commit themselves publicly.

But it was clear that Britain, which intends to leave the bloc following the Brexit referendum of June 2016, would not participate, officials said. Britain has long sought to block EU defense cooperation, fearing it could result in an EU army.

French diplomats said the pact would have several areas where EU governments would agree to work together and pledge funds, including EU military operations, investment and acquiring defense capabilities together as a group.

A German official said the initiative won momentum from French President Emmanuel Macron’s call for a European intervention force in September and U.S. President Donald Trump’s insistence that Europe do more for its security.

Proposals for PESCO include work on a European medical command and a network of logistic hubs in Europe, creation of a crisis response center, and joint training of military officers.

A key goal is to reduce the numbers of weapons systems and prevent duplication to save money and improve joint operations.

It could also serve as an umbrella for projects such as a Franco-German initiative to design a new fighter jet, and existing bilateral military cooperation agreements, such as the close ties between Germany and the Netherlands.

MILITARY “SCHENGEN”

Efforts under the pact will be closely coordinated with the U.S.-led NATO alliance to ensure transparency and avoid any redundancies, the German official said.

One area where NATO and EU officials see common ground is in the need for a military zone for free movement of troops and equipment, loosely based on the EU’s passport-free travel “Schengen” zone.

“I welcome integration to the maximum extent practical. We obviously want to avoid duplication and maximize transparency,” U.S. Air Force General Tod Wolters, NATO Allied Air Commander, told Reuters.

Under the plans, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation would focus on collective defense, while PESCO would ensure a quicker and more efficient EU response to events like the 2014 Ebola crisis in Africa, the official said.

“This will not happen in competition with NATO,” the German official said.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Robin Emmott; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Peter Graff)

After four months jail, Turkey’s Amnesty director says trial is ‘surreal’

Idil Eser, the director of Amnesty in Turkey, poses during an interview with Reuters in Istanbul, Turkey, October 31, 2017.

By Ece Toksabay

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Amnesty International’s Turkey director, freed from four months detention but still facing trial on terrorism charges, said the case against her and other human rights activists was “absurd and surreal”.

Idil Eser was one of eight activists freed last week on bail, in a case which has become a flash-point in Turkey’s tense relations with Europe. Their trial has brought condemnation from rights groups and some Western governments concerned by what they see as creeping authoritarianism in the NATO member state.

The activists were detained by police in July as they attended a workshop on digital security and information management on an island near Istanbul.

The charge against them, of aiding a terrorist organization, is similar to those leveled against tens of thousands of Turks detained since a failed military coup by rogue soldiers in July 2016, in which at least 240 people were killed.

“I cannot even find words to describe the absurdity, the surreality of the situation. It’s total nonsense,” Eser said when asked about the charges. She was speaking to Reuters in her first interview since being released.

Turkey rejects foreign criticism of the trials and says its judiciary operates independently of the government.

“Turkey is a state of law and our judges are independent and impartial,” Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag told reporters earlier this week when asked about the case.

At the time of the activists’ detention, President Tayyip Erdogan said the eight had gathered on the island for a meeting “that might be considered as a follow-up” to last year’s failed coup, which he has cast as part of a foreign-backed plot.

Erdogan was quoted by several Turkish newspapers on Thursday as telling reporters on his plane that the judiciary was acting independently in the case. “We cannot know how the court will rule in the end,” the Hurriyet newspaper quoted him as saying.

 

JAIL SENTENCES

The indictment also brought charges against Swedish national Ali Gharavi and Peter Steudtner, a German, prompting an angry response from Berlin, which threatened to put curbs on economic investment in Turkey and said it was reviewing arms projects.

The day after their release last week, Steudtner and Gharavi left Turkey, but the trial continues on Nov. 22. Prosecutors have sought jail sentences of up to 15 years for all of the defendants.

Steudtner and Gharavi told the court during the trial that they were shocked by the allegations against them. They could not immediately be reached for further comment.

Authorities have jailed more than 50,000 people pending trial in a crackdown following the abortive coup. Erdogan says the purges across society are necessary to maintain stability in Turkey, a NATO member state bordering Iran, Iraq and Syria.

European allies fear he is using the investigations to check opposition and undermine the judiciary.

Eser said her time in jail had marked a turning point in her life. Less than a week after her release, the 54-year-old made an appointment at a tattoo parlor in central Istanbul.

“With other defendants, we had decided to go to a Turkish bath when we got out, and the other decision was to get a tattoo,” she said. “So I started right away.”

 

(Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun; Editing by Dominic Evans and Nick Tattersall)

 

Turkey says will not submit to ‘impositions’ from United States in visa crisis

U.S. Consulate is pictured in Istanbul, Turkey, October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Murad Sezer

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey will not submit to “impositions” from the United States over an on-going visa crisis and will reject any conditions it cannot meet, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday.

A delegation from the United States is visiting Turkey in an attempt to repair diplomatic ties between the NATO allies after both countries stopped issuing visas to each other’s citizens this month.

Washington first suspended visa services at its missions in Turkey, after Turkish authorities detained two Turkish nationals employed as U.S. consular staff. The U.S. delegation has asked Ankara for information and evidence regarding the detained staff, private broadcaster Haberturk reported.

“We will cooperate if their demands meet the rules of our constitution but we will not succumb to impositions and we will reject any conditions that we cannot meet,” Cavusoglu told a news conference, when asked about the report of requests from the U.S. delegation.

A translator at the consulate in the southern province of Adana was arrested in May and a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) worker was detained in Istanbul two weeks ago. Both were detained on suspicion of links to last year’s failed coup, allegations the United States has rejected.

Haberturk said the U.S. delegation, which arrived in Turkey this week, laid out four conditions to solve the visa crisis, including that Turkey must provide information about its investigations into the detained workers, and evidence related to DEA worker Metin Topuz.

President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman said last week Topuz had been in contact with a leading suspect in last year’s failed military coup. Turkish media reported similar accusations against the translator in May.

The U.S. delegation told Ankara that if the contacts which Turkish authorities are seeking to investigate were undertaken on the instructions of the consulate, the employees should not have been arrested, Haberturk said.

(Reporting by Tulay Karadeniz; Writing by Ece Toksabay; Editing by Dominic Evans)

U.S. still seeking explanation for arrest of staff in Turkey: ambassador

U.S. Ambassador to Turkey John Bass speaks during a meeting with media members in Ankara, Tukey, October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer

By Tulay Karadeniz and Gulsen Solaker

ANKARA (Reuters) – The United States is still seeking an explanation from Ankara for the detention of staff at U.S. missions in Turkey which led Washington to stop issuing visas and triggered a diplomatic crisis, the U.S. ambassador said on Wednesday.

Ambassador John Bass said the decision to suspend granting visas was not taken lightly, but the detentions indicated a breakdown in communication between the two NATO allies, whose relations have come under increasing strain.

“Unfortunately… the U.S. government still has not received any official communications from the Turkish government about the reasons why our local employees have been detained or arrested,” he told reporters at the U.S. embassy in Ankara.

Washington says two locally employed staff were arrested in Turkey this year. In May, a translator at the consulate in the southern province of Adana was arrested and last week a Drug Enforcement Administration worker was detained in Istanbul.

President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman said last week the Istanbul employee, Metin Topuz, had been in contact with a leading suspect in last year’s failed military coup. Turkish media reported similar accusations against the translator.

“The notion that people in our employment are facing or are under suspicion of terrorism charges here, that is a very serious allegation,” Bass said. “It is one we want to take seriously and we want to better understand the ostensible evidence that supports these allegations”.

Since the failed military coup in July last year, in which at least 240 people were killed, more than 50,000 people have been detained and 150,000, including teachers, academics, soldiers and journalists, have been suspended from work.

Some Western allies fear the crackdown shows the country is slipping ever deeper into authoritarian rule under Erdogan.

Ankara says its critics fail to understand the scale of the security challenges in Turkey, which has also faced conflict on its southern borders with Iraq and Syria, and an insurgency in its mainly Kurdish southeast.

ENVOY TARGETED

Erdogan has blamed Bass for the latest dispute, suggesting he acted unilaterally in suspending visa services and declaring that his government no longer considered Bass to be Washington’s envoy and would not hold meetings with him.

The U.S. State Department denied Bass acted alone, saying his actions were coordinated with officials in Washington.

In a sign that Ankara was stepping back from the pledge to exclude Bass, Turkish television channels reported that he met a foreign ministry official later on Wednesday. The ambassador is due to leave Turkey within days to take up a post in Afghanistan.

U.S.-Turkish tensions have risen in recent months over U.S. military support for Kurdish YPG fighters in Syria, considered by Ankara to be an extension of the banned PKK which has waged an insurgency for three decades in southeast Turkey.

Turkey has also pressed, so far in vain, for the United States to extradite Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, a former ally of Erdogan who is viewed in Ankara as the mastermind behind the failed coup.

Another source of friction was the U.S. indictment of Turkey’s former economy minister Zafer Caglayan for conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions on Iran. A U.S. court also indicted 15 of Erdogan’s guards after they clashed with protesters during his visit to Washington in May.

In addition to the two detained consulate workers, Turkey is holding a U.S. pastor on charges which Turkish media say include membership of Gulen’s network. Bass called for the release of the Christian missionary, Andrew Brunson, saying he had seen nothing of merit in the charges against him.

He denied reports that Turkish police were trying to speak to another consulate employee. “To the best of our knowledge there are not any outstanding requests from Turkish law enforcement officials for any of our local staff to come in and talk to them,” he said.

(Reporting by Tulay Karadeniz and Gulsen Solaker; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Dominic Evans and Hugh Lawson)

Turkey could look elsewhere if Russia won’t share missile technology

Russian S-400 Triumph medium-range and long-range surface-to-air missile systems drive during the Victory Day parade, marking the 71st anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, at Red Square in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2016.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey could seek a deal to acquire a missile defense system with another country if Russia does not agree to joint production of a defense shield, its foreign minister was quoted as saying on Monday.

NATO member Turkey is seeking to buy the S-400 system from Russia, alarming Washington and other members of the Western alliance, and President Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara has already paid a deposit on the deal.

Turkey hopes that the deal would allow it to acquire the technology to develop its own defense system, and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, in an interview with Turkish newspaper Aksam, said the two countries had agreed on joint production.

“If Russia doesn’t want to comply, we’ll make an agreement with another country,” he said when asked about reports that Russia was reluctant to share the technology. “But we haven’t got any official negative replies (from Russia)”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, asked in a conference call with reporters if the deal would go ahead if Moscow did not agree to joint production, said: “Contacts and negotiations at an expert level in the context of this deal are ongoing. This is all I can say for now.”

Cavusoglu said Turkey had initially hoped to reach agreement with producers from NATO allies.

Western firms which had bid for the contract included U.S. firm Raytheon, which put in an offer with its Patriot missile defense system. Franco-Italian group Eurosam, owned by the multinational European missile maker MBDA and France’s Thales, came second in the tender.

Turkey, with the second-largest army in the alliance, has enormous strategic importance for NATO, abutting as it does Syria, Iraq and Iran. But the relationship has become fractious since an attempted coup against Erdogan in July 2016 and a subsequent crackdown.

 

 

(Reporting by Ali Kucukgocmen in Istanbul and Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow; Editing by Dominic Evans and Richard Balmforth)

 

Turkish minister says will work to improve ties with Germany

Turkey's Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu arrives at a meeting to discuss the Rohingya situation during the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, U.S. September 18, 2017. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith

BERLIN (Reuters) – Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Saturday he would work towards a normalization of relations with Germany after months of mutual recriminations on a range of issues between the NATO allies.

Already tense relations took a turn for the worse after Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan launched a crackdown on his opponents following a failed coup attempt last year.

Germany has also protested against the detention of German citizens on political charges and has raised the question of whether EU accession talks with Turkey should go ahead.

Striking an unusually conciliatory tone, Cavusoglu told Der Spiegel weekly there was no reason for problems between the two countries.

“If you take one step towards us, we will take two towards you,” he said.

And asked if he believed there would be a normalization in relations, Cavusoglu said: “Yes. And I am ready to make an effort towards that.”

Earlier this year, Erdogan and some of his political allies compared Germany to the Nazi era after some local authorities stopped Turkish ministers campaigning here for a referendum that handed the president sweeping new powers. German officials cited security concerns.

The Nazi comparisons were a kind of “response to the hostility” from Germany, Cavusoglu said, adding Germany had to learn to respect Turkey.

Germany’s deputy foreign minister Michael Roth told Welt am Sonntag weekly that Berlin was ready to talk and said he hoped “that we can soon move closer together again.”

However, he said Germany would not be silent when innocent German citizens are behind bars. “We must find solutions to this,” he said.

In an election on Sept. 24, conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel won a fourth term but suffered heavy losses to the far right.

She looks set to try to form a coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and Greens. A possible candidate for foreign minister is Cem Ozdemir, a co-leader of the Greens who has Turkish parents and has been very critical of Erdogan.

“Whoever comes to Turkey as foreign minister will meet the same respect as he shows us,” Cavusoglu told Der Spiegel.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers; editing by Clelia Oziel)

Khamenei says Iran, Turkey must act against Kurdish secession: TV

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani are seen during a joint news conference in Tehran, Iran, October 4, 2017. Kayhan Ozer/Presidential Palace/Handout via REUTERS

By Parisa Hafezi and Tulay Karadeniz

ANKARA (Reuters) – Iran and Turkey should prevent Iraq’s Kurdistan region from declaring independence, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday after meeting Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Tehran, state TV reported.

Relations have generally been cool between Shi’ite Iran and mainly Sunni Turkey, a NATO member. But both have been alarmed by the Iraqi Kurds’ vote for independence last month, fearing it will stoke separatism among their own Kurdish populations.

“Turkey and Iran must take necessary measures against the vote … and Baghdad should make serious decisions … serious and rapid decisions must be taken,” Khamenei was quoted as saying.

“The Iraqi Kurdish secession vote is an act of betrayal toward the entire region and a threat to its future.”

Iran and Turkey have already threatened to join Baghdad in imposing economic sanctions on Iraqi Kurdistan and have launched joint military exercises with Iraqi troops on their borders with the separatist region.

Erdogan, who was on a one-day trip to Tehran, said earlier that Ankara was considering taking further measures against Iraqi Kurdistan.

“We have already said we don’t recognize the referendum in northern Iraq… We have taken some measures already with Iran and the Iraqi central government, but stronger steps will be taken,” he said.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Erdogan vowed to work closely together to prevent the disintegration of Iraq and Syria and to oppose the Iraqi Kurds’ drive for independence.

“We want security and stability in the Middle East … The referendum in Iraq’s Kurdistan is a sectarian plot by foreign countries and is rejected by Tehran and Ankara,” Rouhani said, according to state TV.

“We will not accept a change of borders under any circumstances.”

KHAMENEI BLAMES ISRAEL, U.S.

Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region said on Tuesday it was calling presidential and parliamentary elections for Nov. 1. Baghdad responded by announcing further punitive measures.

The central government, its neighbors and Western powers fear the vote in favor of secession could spark another, wider conflict in the Middle East region to add to the war in Syria. They fear it could derail the fight against Islamic State.

The Kurds are the region’s fourth-largest ethnic group, spread across Iran, Turkey, Syria and Iraq, all of which oppose any moves toward a Kurdish state.

Khamenei accused Iran’s arch foe the United States of planning to create a new Israel in the Middle East by supporting the Kurdish vote in Iraq.

“America and Israel benefit from the vote … America and foreign powers are unreliable and seek to create a new Israel in the region,” he said.

The United States opposed the referendum as a destabilizing move at a time when all sides in the region are still fighting Islamic State.

Erdogan, whose security forces have been embroiled in a decades-long battle with Kurdish separatists in southeast Turkey, repeated his accusation that Israel was behind the Iraqi Kurds’ referendum.

“There is no country other than Israel that recognizes it. A referendum which was conducted by sitting side by side with Mossad has no legitimacy,” he said, referring to the Israeli intelligence agency.

Israel has denied Turkey’s previous claims of involvement in the vote, but has welcomed the Kurds’ vote for independence.

Rouhani also said that Tehran and Ankara planned to expand economic ties. “Turkey will import more gas from Iran… Meetings will be held to discuss the details,” he said.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi, additional reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu, Dirimcan Barut, Daren Butler; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Russia throws North Korea lifeline to stymie regime change

Russia throws North Korea lifeline to stymie regime change

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia is quietly boosting economic support for North Korea to try to stymie any U.S.-led push to oust Kim Jong Un as Moscow fears his fall would sap its regional clout and allow U.S. troops to deploy on Russia’s eastern border.

Though Moscow wants to try to improve battered U.S.-Russia relations in the increasingly slim hope of relief from Western sanctions over Ukraine, it remains strongly opposed to what it sees as Washington’s meddling in other countries’ affairs.

Russia is already angry about a build-up of U.S.-led NATO forces on its western borders in Europe and does not want any replication on its Asian flank.

Yet while Russia has an interest in protecting North Korea, which started life as a Soviet satellite state, it is not giving Pyongyang a free pass: it backed tougher United Nations sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear tests last month.

But Moscow is also playing a fraught double game, by quietly offering North Korea a slender lifeline to help insulate it from U.S.-led efforts to isolate it economically.

A Russian company began routing North Korean internet traffic this month, giving Pyongyang a second connection with the outside world besides China. Bilateral trade more than doubled to $31.4 million in the first quarter of 2017, due mainly to what Moscow said was higher oil product exports.

At least eight North Korean ships that left Russia with fuel cargoes this year have returned home despite officially declaring other destinations, a ploy U.S. officials say is often used to undermine sanctions against Pyongyang.

And Russia, which shares a short land border with North Korea, has also resisted U.S.-led efforts to repatriate tens of thousands of North Korean workers whose remittances help keep the country’s hard line leadership afloat.

“The Kremlin really believes the North Korean leadership should get additional assurances and confidence that the United States is not in the regime change business,” Andrey Kortunov, head of the Russian International Affairs Council, a think-tank close to the Russian Foreign Ministry, told Reuters.

“The prospect of regime change is a serious concern. The Kremlin understands that (U.S. President Donald) Trump is unpredictable. They felt more secure with Barack Obama that he would not take any action that would explode the situation, but with Trump they don’t know.”

Trump, who mocks North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a “rocket man” on a suicide mission, told the United Nations General Assembly last month he would “totally destroy” the country if necessary.

He has also said Kim Jong Un and his foreign minister “won’t be around much longer” if they made good on a threat to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the United States.

STRATEGIC BORDER

To be sure, Beijing’s economic ties to Pyongyang still dwarf Moscow’s and China remains a more powerful player in the unfolding nuclear crisis. But while Beijing is cutting back trade as it toughens its line on its neighbor’s ballistic missile and nuclear program, Russia is increasing its support.

People familiar with elements of Kremlin thinking say that is because Russia flatly opposes regime change in North Korea.

Russian politicians have repeatedly accused the United States of plotting so-called color revolutions across the former Soviet Union and any U.S. talk of unseating any leader for whatever reason is politically toxic in Moscow.

Russia’s joint military exercises with neighboring Belarus last month gamed a scenario where Russian forces put down a Western-backed attempt for part of Belarus to break away.

With Russia due to hold a presidential election in March, politicians are again starting to fret about Western meddling.

In 2011, President Vladimir Putin accused then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of trying to stir up unrest in Russia and he has made clear that he wants the United States to leave Kim Jong Un alone.

While condemning Pyongyang for what he called provocative nuclear tests, Putin told a forum last month in the eastern Russian port of Vladivostok that he understood North Korea’s security concerns about the United States and South Korea.

Vladivostok, a strategic port city of 600,000 people and headquarters to Russia’s Pacific Fleet, is only about 100 km (60 miles) from Russia’s border with North Korea.

Russia would be fiercely opposed to any U.S. forces deploying nearby in a reunited Korea.

“(The North Koreans) know exactly how the situation developed in Iraq,” Putin told the economic forum, saying Washington had used the false pretext that Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction to destroy the country and its leadership.

“They know all that and see the possession of nuclear weapons and missile technology as their only form of self-defense. Do you think they’re going to give that up?”

Analysts say Russia’s view is that North Korea’s transformation into a nuclear state, though incomplete, is permanent and irreversible and the best the West can hope for is for Pyongyang to freeze elements of its program.

NOTHING PERSONAL

Kortunov, the think-tank chief close to the Russian Foreign Ministry, said he did not think the Kremlin’s defense of Kim Jong Un was based on any personal affection or support for North Korea’s leadership, likening Moscow’s pragmatic backing to that it has given Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.

Moscow’s position was motivated by a belief the status quo made Russia a powerful geopolitical player in the crisis because of its close ties to Pyongyang, Kortunov said, just as Russia’s support for Assad has gifted it greater Middle East clout.

He said Moscow knew it would lose regional leverage if Kim Jong Un fell, much as its Middle East influence was threatened when Islamist militants looked like they might overthrow Assad in 2015.

“It’s a very delicate balancing act,” said Kortunov.

“On the one hand, Russia doesn’t want to deviate from the line of its partners and mostly from China’s position on North Korea which is getting tougher. But on the other hand, politicians in Moscow understand that the current situation and level of interaction between Moscow and Pyongyang puts Russia in a league of its own compared to China.”

If the United States were to remove Kim Jong Un by force, he said Russia could face a refugee and humanitarian crisis on its border, while the weapons and technology Pyongyang is developing could fall into even more dangerous non-state hands.

So despite Russia giving lukewarm backing to tighter sanctions on Pyongyang, Putin wants to help its economy grow and is advocating bringing it into joint projects with other countries in the region.

“We need to gradually integrate North Korea into regional cooperation,” Putin told the Vladivostok summit last month.

(Editing by David Clarke)

Turkey to give harshest response if border threatened after Iraq referendum: PM

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim addresses his supporters in Kirsehir, Turkey, August 23, 2017. Mustafa Aktas/Prime Minister's Press Office/Handout via REUTERS

By Daren Butler

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey said on Thursday it had stopped training peshmerga forces in northern Iraq in response to a Kurdish independence vote there, whose backers had thrown themselves “into the fire”.

The Kurdish peshmerga have been at the forefront of the campaign against Islamic State and been trained by NATO-member Turkey’s military since late 2014.

Northern Iraq’s main link to the outside world, Turkey views Monday’s vote – which final results on Wednesday showed overwhelming in favour of independence from Baghdad – as a clear security threat.

Fearing it will inflame separatism among its own Kurds, Ankara had already threatened military and economic measures in retaliation. Government spokesman Bekir Bozdag reiterated on Thursday any such actions would be coordinated with the Iraqi central government.

Bozdag, also a deputy prime minister, told broadcaster TGRT in an interview that more steps would follow the peshmerga decision and that the prime ministers of Turkey and Iraq would meet soon.

Turkey, which is home to the region’s largest Kurdish population, is battling a three-decade Kurdish insurgency in its southeast, which borders northern Iraq.

MINIMUM DAMAGE?

President Tayyip Erdogan said it was inevitable that the referendum “adventure” in northern Iraq, carried out despite Turkey’s warnings, would end in disappointment.

“With its independence initiative, the northern Iraq regional government has thrown itself into the fire,” he said in a speech to police officers at his palace in Ankara.

Earlier this week, Erdogan said Iraqi Kurds would go hungry if his country halted the flow of trucks and oil across the border, near where Turkish and Iraqi soldiers have been carrying out military exercises this week.

Hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day flow through a pipeline in Turkey from northern Iraq, connecting the region to global oil markets.

Erdogan has repeatedly threatened economic sanctions, but has given few details.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Turkey would not shy away from giving the harshest response to a national security threat on its border, but that this was not its first choice.

Speaking in the central Turkish province of Corum, Yildirim said Turkey, Iran and Iraq were doing their best to overcome the crisis caused by the referendum with the minimum damage.

Iraq, including the Kurdish region, was Turkey’s third-largest export market in 2016, according to IMF data. Turkish exports to the country totalled $8.6 billion, behind Germany and Britain.

(Additional reporting by Ece Toksabay, Ercan Gurses and Ezgi Erkoyun; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan and John Stonestreet)