Turkish objections have thwarted Israel’s attempt to open a NATO office, says Turkish FM, stressing determination to also keep Israel out of data-sharing after a high-powered US radar system is deployed in Turkey.

Turkey has blocked an Israeli move to open a representation office at NATO headquarters, its foreign minister said Sunday, adding that data collected by a radar system in eastern Turkey would not be shared with Israel.

“Israel recently made an attempt to open an office at NATO [headquarters] in Brussels. We said we would veto this attempt and the issue was not even put on the agenda,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said in an interview with the CNNTürk news channel.

A Foreign Ministry official told the Hürriyet Daily News that Israel made the request under NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue program, launched in 1994 with seven Mediterranean countries.

Israel attempted to have its request approved earlier this month after Ankara downgraded ties with Tel Aviv over its failure to apologize for a deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship, the official said, adding that the issue could not even make its way onto NATO’s agenda after Turkey threatened to use its veto.

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Related article:
– “Israel: Global NATO’s 29th Member”, by Rick Rozoff, Voltaire Network, 18 January 2010.

Source: Hürriyet Daily News