{{Germany’s Cabinet on Thursday approved sending German Patriot air defense missiles to Turkey to defend the NATO member against possible attacks from Syria, in a major step toward Western military involvement in the Syrian conflict.}}<\/p>\n
Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters that two batteries with a total of 400 soldiers would be sent to the border area for one year, although the deployment could be shortened.<\/p>\n
The decision must be endorsed by the German Parliament, but approval is assured.<\/p>\n
The Dutch Cabinet is expected to announce approval Friday contingent on parliamentary approval.<\/p>\n
The Western alliance decided this week to approve sending the weapons to prevent cross-border attacks against Turkey after mortar rounds and shells from Syria killed five Turks.<\/p>\n
But the announcement also appeared to be a message to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime at a time when Washington and other governments fear Syria may be readying its chemical weapons stockpiles for possible use.<\/p>\n
Syria has denounced the NATO plan but German officials stressed that the missiles will only be used to defend Turkish territory and would not be a part of any “no fly zone” over Syrian territory.<\/p>\n
“Nobody knows what such a regime is capable of and that is why we are acting protectively here,” Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said.<\/p>\n
Officials said the Patriots will be programmed so that they can intercept only Syrian weapons that cross into Turkish airspace. They aren’t allowed to penetrate Syrian territory pre-emptively. That means they would have no immediate effect on any Syrian government offensives \u2014 chemical or conventional \u2014 that remain strictly inside the country’s national borders.<\/p>\n
Due to the complexity and size of the Patriot batteries \u2014 including their radars, command-and-control centers, communications and support facilities \u2014 they will probably have to travel by sea, NATO officials said.<\/p>\n
They probably won’t arrive in Turkey for another month, officials predicted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Germany’s Cabinet on Thursday approved sending German Patriot air defense missiles to Turkey to defend the NATO member against possible attacks from Syria, in a major step toward Western military involvement in the Syrian conflict.}} Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters that two batteries with a total of 400 soldiers would be sent to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-4450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4450"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=4450"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=4450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}