Category Archives: NATO

Western officials have often criticized Viktor Orban's government for backsliding on democracy, but they've tended to praise it for a steadfast commitment to NATO, whose summit Orban attended in May | Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images

Government insists there is no such thing as a special relationship between Russia and Hungary.

By Lili Bayer

7/19/17, 4:01 AM CET

NATO allies are worried about expanding Russian intelligence operations in Hungary.

While Western officials have often criticized the government in Budapest for backsliding on democracy, theyve tended to praise it for a steadfast commitment to NATO. But officials from allied countriessay Russia increasingly sees Hungary as an operational backdoor into Europe.

There is tremendous concern that Russia is basically using Hungary as an intel forward operating base in NATO and the EU, said a former official at the U.S. Embassy in Budapest, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Western officials say Russian intelligence agencies have boosted their presence over the past few years in Hungary, which is a member of Europes border-free Schengen zone, to launch a variety of intelligence and sabotage operations in the EU.

Back in 2014-2015 [the Russians] went from maybe 50-100 intelligence officers up to 300 plus in Hungary, said the former embassy official.

Generally we expect they are openly capturing telecoms, running HUMINT [human intelligence] sources all over Europe, planning and staging all kinds of cyber sabotage, linking up with organized crime and supporting folks in parties like [the far-right] Jobbik with fat sacks of cash and maybe even some intel-sourced dirt, this person added.

Located on NATOs eastern edge and bordering Ukraine, Hungary is considered an important component of the alliances eastern defense strategy. Allied troops are currently training in Hungary as part of NATOs 10-day Saber Guardian exercises.

Everyone thinks Hungary is compromised Western NATO employee during part ofOrbns term

With Hungarian troops deployed in Kosovo and Afghanistan and a brigade currently training in Estonia, policymakers in Budapest often make the case that regardless of Prime Minister Viktor Orbns friendliness with the Kremlin, Hungary at its core is a dedicated NATO ally.

Orbn has vowed to boost defense spending, with the goal of it reaching 2 percent of GDP by 2024. All NATO countries have committed to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense, although only five member countries currently do so a matter U.S. President Donald Trump has highlighted in an effort to get European allies to boost their contribution to the organization.

NATO policy is an exception in Hungarian politics, its been consistent, regardless of any governments ideology, said one current Hungarian official, who declined to be identified.

I have never felt like Im not taken seriously by NATO partners, he said, adding that Hungary is quite active in contributing intelligence to alliance members, especially on Ukraine and the Western Balkans.

In the alliances Brussels headquarters, some officials try to highlight the countrys positive efforts. Hungary contributes a lot to the alliance within the constraints of its limited resources, said one NATO official. The country plays a key role in strengthening NATOs defense in the eastern part of the alliance, he added.

But among some of their partners,the Hungarian government and security apparatus are regarded as untrustworthy.

Everyone thinks Hungary is compromised, said one Westerner who worked for NATO during part of the Orbn years. I was told not to share anything classified with Hungarians, even if they had the appropriate clearance, this person said.

The Hungarian government, in response to questions from POLITICO, denied that there are any concerns about Russian operations in Hungary.

There is no such thing as a special relationship between Russia and Hungary, a spokesman for the government wrote, adding that the Hungarian intelligence services fulfill of all their duties regardless of the nature or origin of any given issue.

Since coming to office in 2010, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbn has reached out to Moscow, meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin frequently and sealing a deal for a 10 billion Russian loan for the Paks II nuclear power plant project.

In late 2016, Hungarian online news portal Index reported that a far-right paramilitary leader, who was accused of shooting a police officer, had for years been meeting with Russian intelligence personnel on Hungarian territory. Members of the GRU, Russias military intelligence, have developed relationships with several far-right Hungarian groups, according to the Index report.Some Russian diplomats, moreover,participated in airsofta sport that uses non-lethal equipment resembling guns with far-right activists while Hungarian intelligence services turned a blind eye, the report said.

Suspected Russian intelligence operations have also impacted Hungarians directly. In April, online news portal 444.hu reported that the governments national consultation website where Hungarians were asked to answer a series of questions on their personal views used a tracking code belonging to Russian firm Yandex, which forwarded Hungarians data to a server in Russia. Hungarys National Data Protection Agency, under pressure from critics who say Yandex is bound by Russian law to share information with Russian security services if asked, later announced it would investigate any potential mishandling of Hungarians personal data, which the government had originally assured users would not be shared with foreign third parties.

Some Hungarians, meanwhile, see Western critics as simply hypocritical.

Some Hungarian intelligence professionals are concerned that the Orbn government is leaving Hungary vulnerable to Russian operations.

If we just look at the past six months, we see obvious Russian activities that cannot be explained in a normal NATO or EU member state, Ferenc Katrein, a former director of counterespionage and counterterrorism operations at Hungarys civilian counterintelligence agency, told POLITICO.

He pointed to cases like the national consultation websites forwarding of Hungarians personal information to a Russian server and the recent intimidation of an opposition activist in Budapest by a Chechen who, according to some Hungarian media reports, threatened the activist with the encouragement of a Russian diplomat.

The frequent appearance of stories from Russian state media in Hungarian state-owned outletsand media close to the ruling party has also raised questions about the relationship between Budapest and Moscow.

While the official Hungarian media is constantly attacking the allies, there is no criticism of the Russians This contradiction is telling, said Katrein.

Bilateral military-to-military information-sharing with Western allies almost evaporated after Orbn was elected in 2010, said Gyz Zakaris, a retired Hungarian army colonel who has studied the challenges facing Hungarys armed forces.

Some Western officials say the Orbn government is allowing Russian activity to go unchecked for political reasons.

The Hungarians are tracking [Russian activity] and arent exactly thrilled either, but our read was that Hungarian officials dont believe they can kick them all out without provoking Russia, said the former U.S. Embassy official.

Some Hungarians, meanwhile, see Western critics as simply hypocritical.

What we think, we say, and thats unusual in international politics, said the Hungarian official, adding that many NATO members are in constant communication with the Kremlin but are simply not as open about their ties.

I dont think anyone doubts for a moment that its in Hungarys interest to be part of NATO, said Eleni Kounalakis, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Hungary between 2010 and 2013.

Orbn doesnt want Russian influence in Hungary, she said. The prime minister sees his role as navigating among surrounding powers and protecting Hungarys interests.

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Moscow spooks return to Hungary, raising NATO hackles - POLITICO.eu

ISLAMABAD

NATO confirmed Tuesday that Afghanistans vice president, Abdul Rashid Dostum, tried to return to the country overnight but that his private plane was denied permission to land in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Dostum, a 63-year-old ethnic Uzbek warlord, and some of his militia guards, have been under investigation for months over allegations of torturing and sexually assaulting an elderly political rival by the name of Ahmad Ishchi.

The first vice president left the country for Turkey about two months ago, saying he needed health care, a move prompting allegations Afghan President Ashraf Ghani allowed Dostum to travel abroad under a secret deal to escape prosecution.

What happened with General Dostum was that he was denied permission to land in Mazar-i-Sharif, a spokesman for NATOs Resolute Support mission, Bill Salvin, told VOA.

While we were asked to make a phone call to try and get permission for the first vice president to land, we declined to make that phone call because our commander up in the north said that this is not the role of Resolute Support, Salvin added, without naming the caller.

He noted that the international missions role is to provide training, advice and assistance to Afghan security forces and it would not have been appropriate to intervene in internal Afghan matters.

Local media reported that aviation authorities directed Dostums plane to Kabuls international airport but instead, it turned back and landed in the neighboring central Asian state of Turkmenistan.

Dostums spokespeople and political allies in Afghanistan have denied that he was on the plane, saying the first vice president is still in Turkey.

The Afghan government has not commented.

Reports of comeback attempt

The controversial Uzbek strongman attempted to stage Mondays dramatic comeback days after he formed a three-party political alliance, which also involved Governor Mohammad Atta Noor of the northern Afghan province, where the aircraft tried to land on Monday.

The formation of the coalition was announced in Turkey and it brings together discontented political groups that are also part of the government.

Noor has also rejected reports Dostum was on board the plane. A statement quoted the governor as saying a group of engineers was on the flight and technical problems forced the plane to return to Turkey.

Afghan judicial officials announced earlier this month that the probe into allegations against Dostum and his men has been completed and sent to the court for further action.

President Ghani has been under pressure at home and from Afghanistans international backers led by the United States to ensure extremely serious charges against his vice president are reviewed and follow-up legal action is taken.

The acting U.S. ambassador to Kabul last week emphasized that the legal process underscores the Afghan states effort to uphold the rule of law and combat impunity, and to send a signal to the world that no one is above the law in Afghanistan.

Late last year, Ishchi, a former provincial governor, said in a nationally televised interview that Dostum's militiamen detained, tortured and sexually assaulted him. He alleged that Dostum had ordered the detention and abuse.

Observers say that Mondays incident is likely to fuel tensions between Dostum and Ghani. The warlord, who enjoys a strong following in northern Afghan regions, has rejected charges against him as politically motivated and an attempt to marginalize him.

Ghani has defended Dostum's departure from Afghanistan, saying he left with the permission of the attorney general and that the laws do not bar someone suspected of wrongdoing from seeking medical treatment abroad.

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NATO: Plane Carrying Afghan VP Denied Landing Rights - Voice of America

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Danish troops will get training in how to deal with Russian misinformation before being sent to join a NATO military build-up in Estonia in January, Defense Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen said on Monday.

"It is a whole new world. The Danish soldiers need to be extremely aware of that. Therefore I have arranged with the armed forces that the soldiers being sent out in January are informed and educated in how to protect themselves," Frederiksen told Danish broadcaster DR.

"It is easy to imagine they will become exposed to intimidation and fake rumors," he said of the 200 Danish soldiers being deployed.

In February, Lithuanian prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into a false report of a 15-year-old girl being raped by German NATO soldiers which spread quickly on social media.

NATO accused Russia of being behind the false report and said it expected more propaganda of this sort in the future.

Both NATO and the European Union are concerned by Russia's ability to use television and the internet to project what they say is deliberate misinformation. Russia has denied being involved in any cyber warfare targeting Western governments or institutions.

Reporting by Julie Astrid Thomsen; Editing by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen and Robin Pomeroy

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Denmark to train NATO soldiers to combat Russian misinformation - Reuters

NATO and Russian aircraft and ships have drawn ever closer in the skies and seas around Eastern Europe in recent years, engaging in a kind ofcat-and-mouse game that has led to many near misses.

A significant number of these encounters have taken place above the Baltics, where NATO members border a Russia they see asgrowing increasingly aggressive in its near abroad.

June alone saw several such incidents, including a Russian jetinterceptinga US B-52 over the Baltic Sea early in the month, another Russian jet flyingwithin a few feetof a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance jet over the Baltic Sea in mid-June, and a NATO F-16buzzingthe Russian defense ministers jet later in the month.

Western officials and the research and advocacy group Global Zero which analyzed 97 mid-air confrontations between Russian and Western aircraft over the Baltic between March 2014 and April 2017 have saidthat Russian pilots are more often responsible for unsafe interceptions; some of which arise from negligence or are accidents, while some are deliberate shows of force.

What we see in the Baltic Sea is increased military activity we see it on land, at sea, and in the air, and that just underlines the importance of transparency and predictability to prevent incidents and accidents, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenbergtold The Wall Street Journal. And if they happen, it is important to make sure they dont spiral out of control and create dangerous situations.

Western officials and analysts believe Moscow is using such incidents as geopolitical tactics, responding to events in Europe and elsewhere, such as in Syria. Russia has denied this and said that recent reports about its abilities and activity in the region are total Russophobia.

Both sides are working toward risk reduction policies for the Baltics. But the uptick in aerial encounters comes amid increased military activity by both sides on the ground in Eastern Europe.

Some 25,000 troops from the U.S. and 23 other countries are taking part in the Saber Guardian military exercise in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romaniathis month the drills are designed as adeterrentand are larger in both scale and scope than previous exercises, U.S. European Commandsaidin June.U.S. bombers alsotraveledto the UK in June in preparation for two separate multilateral exercises in the Baltics and elsewhere in Europe that month.

Those military exercises come ahead of war games planned for September by Russia and Belarus. Those exercises could involve up to 100,000 troops and include nuclear-weapons training.

Neighboring countries haveexpressed concernthat those war games could leave a permanent Russian presence in Belarus the U.S. plans tostation paratroopersin Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania during them andwill adjustits fighter-jet rotation to put more experienced pilots in the area to better manage any encounters with Russian forces.

The U.S. and NATO have increased troop deployments to Eastern Europe. UK and Canadianforces are headedto Poland, Latvia, and Estonia, and NATO personnel are already in Lithuania. The latter country has called for a permanent US military presence there as a game changer to counter Moscow.

In the wake of this months G20 summit in Germany, several countries in Eastern Europe are moving to boost their air-defense capabilities, with the US aiding the effort.

In early July, Poland and the U.S. signed a memorandum of understanding for an$8 billion saleof U.S.-made Patriot missiles.

This week, the State Department gave tentative approval toa $3.9 billion saleof Patriot missiles and related equipment, like radars, to Romania.

Patriot missiles have also beenstationedin Lithuania for the first time, albeit temporarily, as part of military exercises focused on air defense and involving five NATO countries.

Russian President Vladimir Putinhas said several timesthat the deployment of defensive missile systems by NATO allies would be a great danger, and he has threatened to respond by boosting Russias own missile systems.

The way I view the Patriots deployment is that it also forms part of a broader U.S. response in the region to the upcoming Russian exercise nearby, Magnus Nordenman, a Nordic security expert at the Atlantic Council,told AFP.

Air defense has not been a priority for the last 15 years when NATO was busy in Afghanistan, dealing with piracy and peacekeeping, he said. There was not much of an air threat but now that Russia is building up air forces, it is different.

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Russian, NATO Pilots Test Wills In Skies Above Eastern Europe - Task & Purpose

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the West won the Cold War. And with the end of this struggle eventually came new European NATO member states among them, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, the three Baltics States, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and some of the republics that emerged out of Yugoslavia. But how well can NATOs new allies contribute to their own national defense, let alone contribute to collective defense? Relatedly, how effective have old NATO members been in assisting their former adversaries to create modern reliable capabilities? The United States alone has spent billions for training and modernization , as well as assisting in building modern civil ministries of defense. Yet universally, since the end of the Cold War all of NATOs newer members continue to struggle to create, let alone sustain, reliable modern capabilities.

Instead of tackling these problems head on, Western officials have leaned on the old trope that nations need to spend at least 2 percent of GDP on defense. The alliance declared in 2014 that those nations not meeting this goal would endeavor to do within a decade in order to meet alliance commitments and goals. This aim, wittingly or otherwise, is premised on a number of questionable assumptions, not least of which is that increased spending by newer member states will translate into new or more capabilities.

I have been intimately involved in planning, directing, and delivering advice and assistance to every country in the region (save Lithuania) for almost 20 years. The results of this experience and loads of hard thinking about the problem can be found in a book published last month. And on the basis of this experience, I am confident that more spending wont do the job. Indeed, many important issues related to capacity, capability, readiness, and training are being overlooked by the alliance.

Unfortunately, Western officials have long lacked a full appreciation of the actual state of reform of new members armed forces. After all, any likely aggression by Russia would almost certainly fall on Central or Eastern Europe. It is therefore incumbent on these armed forces to be capable of responding in a coherent fashion. In reality, the reform of new NATO allies armed forces, and indeed their entire defense institutions, remains a work in progress. Newer member states continue to struggle to adopt the most basic Western democratic defense governance concepts. But due to a lack of commitment by governments in the region to reform and inconsistent political pressure from leading Western nations, ministries in the region plan and manage ineffectually all the while their armed forces are literally rusting away. This can be observed in their airfields, ship docks, and vehicle parks. Worst of all, this equipment is not being modernized and/or replaced. An easy and objective example can be found in the low number of flight hours combat pilots get per annum in relation to their old NATO counterparts.

How did the alliance get to this point? There are a number of possible explanations. First, in making troop contributions to Afghanistan and particularly Iraq, the armed forces of these countries have avoided objective scrutiny of their actual state of reform from Washington and other leading NATO capitals. A pernicious habit has developed of Western military officials in particular offering insincere compliments on how well reform is going when such praise is not warranted. Second, early on in these states transition to democracy, Western officials determined that their advice and assistance would be technical and delegated its management to their armed forces. Thus, Western support has been based on a trinity of being defined as technical, focused at the tactical level, and using training as the preferred tool. Western officials continue to hope without evidence that they can change public institutions through technical advice while ignoring that reform is fundamentally political in nature. Due to this inattention, these armed forces have failed to modernize, maintained hollow units, and forgone essential leadership, individual, and, particularly,collective training. It is little wonder that the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in the last Congress held hearings into the effectiveness of the Department of Defenses management of security cooperation programs. Lawmakers skepticism of current policies is clearly expressed in the latest National Defense Authorization Act.

In light of this situation, old and new NATO members must fundamentally change their policies. The alliance needs an honest defense initiative. Senior Western officials need to take a harder line in their interactions with their allied counterparts on NATOs eastern flank and start demanding painful political decisions in order to adopt Western democratic defense governance concepts. As Western and legacy concepts are antithetical to each other, the latter should be retired in order to adopt the former. Specifically, political capital will need to be spent to develop non-complex and effective defense planning methods, stop practices that preclude their armed forces from training and developing military leaders in accordance with Western practices, and radically transform their ineffectual legacy logistics organizations. Equally, newer allies and partners must insist Western officials end the corrosive practice of offering false compliments and become brutally honest with their failures and weaknesses. In essence, these officials need to demand Western officials take them seriously and deal with them on the basis of equality and honesty.

Thus, the long-standing canard, articulated particularly by U.S. officials, that members must simply increase their defense budgets is in urgent need of refinement. On its own, encouraging new members to spend more on defense in no way guarantees new funding actually will produce new and needed capabilities. An honest defense initiative could encourage deep reforms and provide appropriate advice and assistance to enable legacy defense institutions to prepare to contribute effective capabilities as quickly as possible. Ominously, Russian aggression against Ukraine demonstrates that weak defense capabilities all but invite Russian mischief-making. The alliance has allowed this disquieting situation to go unaddressed for some 25 years. It is doubtful the West can count on President Vladimir Putin allowing NATO another 25 years to complete the reform of these legacy defense institutions.

Thomas-Durell Young is Program Manger Europe at the Center for Civil-Military Relations of the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He is the author of Anatomy of Post-Communist European Defense Institutions: Mirage of Military Modernity (Bloomsbury, 2017). The views expressed in this article are those solely of the author and do not reflect the policy or views of the Naval Postgraduate School, Department of the Navy, or the Department of Defense.

Image: NATO

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NATO's Blind Spot: Getting to Honest Defense - War on the Rocks

Political elections are not the only target of Russia's hacking and "fake news" campaigns. Fighting forces can be targeted, as well.As such, Denmark will reportedly train troops against propaganda that it plans to send NATO next year in Estonia as the build-up of forces in Eastern Europe continues, according to Reuters.

Though Russia was not specifically mentioned, President Vladimir Putins government has been directly accused of meddling in the United Stateselection by disseminating false news reports and conducting cyberattacks as well as similar efforts in France, Austria, the Ukraine, Germany and the Netherlands, to name a few.

"It is a whole new world. The Danish soldiers need to be extremely aware of that. Therefore I have arranged with the armed forces that the soldiers being sent out in January are informed and educated in how to protect themselves,"Danish defense minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen said Monday.

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"It is easy to imagine they will become exposed to intimidation and fake rumors," Frederiksen added.

The 200 Danish troops are scheduled to reach Estonia in January.

Denmarks plan comes in response to an incident in February when German NATO troops stationed in Lithuania were falsely accused of raping a 15-year-old girl in emails sent to high-ranking members of Lithuanias government and its media outlets, DW reported.

Prosecutors later opened a criminal investigation because of the false story, and NATO blamed Russia.

Putin, who met with President Donald Trump for more than two hours earlier this month at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, claimed he firmly denied accusations of election meddling when Trump brought it up. Russia also has denied knowledge ofother alleged hacks.

In Europe, Russias efforts also involve attempts to thwart the increasing number of troops in Eastern Europe as NATO and Russia posture for military prominence.

Most recently, leaders from NATO members congregated in Poland to discuss defense efforts. The new movements will mark the first time multinational forces will rotate in Eastern Europe since the Cold War, according to PBS.

The U.S., alone, had deployed roughly 4,000 troops to Polandand to make rotations in Europeas of January, with other equipment like tanks also making its way to Latvia, Romania and Lithuania.

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NATO Is Fighting Russia's Fake News Schemes by Training Danish Troops How to Spot Propaganda - Newsweek

Russia's summer wargames, named Zapad ("West") 2017, are set to kick off in September but are already setting off alarm bells across Europe. Held every four years, the Zapad exercises are a window into Russia's military prowessand perhaps future intentions.

The exercises, held jointly between Russia and neighboring Belarus, will take place later this summer in the two countries, involving the armed forces of both. According to Belarus' defense minister, "Up to 12,700 servicemen are planned to be involved in the drills. About 10,200 troops will be involved on the territory of our country, including 7,200 servicemen from the Belarusian Armed Forces and about 3,000 from the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation." The minister also stated that 680 pieces of military hardware, including armored vehicles, would take part in the exercises. Zapad 2017 will take place at six different training grounds scattered across the two countries.

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The location of the exercises, in Central Europe near NATO members states Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, has made NATO nervousespecially after Russia's secret 2014 war in Ukraine and annexation of the Crimean peninsula. The Zapad 2013 exercises, also held by Russia and Belarus, were publicly claimed to involve approximately 12,000 troops but in reality that number was more like 90,000, according to the Atlantic Council. How many troops will really exercise in September is anyone's guess, although some NATO members believe the true number of troops will be around 100,000.

Exercises are also used by the Russian government to shift forces around to prepare for actual combat operations. In 2008, military exercises preceded Russia's invasion of neighboring Georgia. In 2014, the Russian government staged exercises involving 150,000 troops near the Russian-Ukrainian border. After the exercise many of the units stayed in the area to participate in the subsequent war with Ukraine.

2S5 Giatsint self-propelled guns firing during an exercise in the Russian Far East, 2017.

Getty Yuri Smityuk.

Past Zapad exercises have also featured new tactics and technologies later seen in subsequent conflicts. Western observers first noticed Russia's use of unmanned aerial vehicles to spot for artillery and assess the effects of artillery strikes at Zapad 2013. The exercise was also notable for its use of tactical missiles for deep strikes and anti-guerrilla operations, which were later put to use in Syria.

Zapad actually predates the Russian Federation, having originated in the old Soviet Union. The Zapad '81 wargames were huge, involving involved between 100,000 and 150,000 Soviet Warsaw Pact military personnel, tank armies, large numbers of aircraft and ships, and even simulated use of tactical nuclear weapons.

For its part, Russia claims it is trying to be as transparent as possible with the exercises, including inviting 80 observers from NATO, the United Nations, and other countries. But the only know the aftermath is to wait and see.

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Russia's Summer Wargames Are Making NATO Nervous - Popular Mechanics

BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) - NATO's Secretary General has urged the Turkish and German foreign ministers to resolve their differences over visits to Turkish air bases, part of a wider row between the two allies.

Germany has refused to extradite asylum seekers Turkey says were involved in a coup attempt last year, Berlin is demanding the release of a Turkish-German journalist, and Ankara has refused to let German lawmakers visit soldiers at two air bases.

German soldiers contribute to a NATO air surveillance mission at Konya, 250 km (150 miles) south of the Turkish capital Ankara, and its troops stationed at another air base, in Incirlik, have already been moved to Jordan.

NATO said Jens Stoltenberg had called Sigmar Gabriel and Mevlut Cavusoglu on Friday to ask them to settle the dispute.

"We hope that Germany and Turkey are able to find a mutually acceptable date for a visit," a NATO spokesman said.

Germany's armed forces are under parliamentary control and Berlin says the lawmakers must have access to its soldiers.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted in a television interview on Sunday that German lawmakers should be allowed to visit the Bundeswehr soldiers at the NATO air base in Konya.

"This whole issue is unfortunate, very unfortunate," Merkel told public broadcaster ARD, adding that more talks were needed to find a solution, also with the help of NATO.

On whether Ankara had asked Berlin to extradite asylum seekers in exchange for granting lawmakers access to the air base, Merkel said she was not aware of any such a request.

"If this was the case..., we would reject this entirely," Merkel said.

There could be no negotiations with Ankara about the extradition of Turkish asylum seekers and granting German lawmakers access to the soldiers at Konya air base because both issues were completely unrelated, she added.

Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek in Brussels and Michael Nienaber in Berlin; Editing by Louise Ireland and Giles Elgood

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NATO urges Turkey, Germany to settle air base row - Reuters

Defence lawyers for 11 residents of the north-eastern village of Sopot, who are being retried for allegedly planting a mine in 2003 that killed two Polish NATO soldiers and one Macedonian civilian, have expressed hope that the Special Prosecution, SJO will drop all charges at the next court session scheduled for September 18.

I think that the SJO would drop the charges in this case at the first session [as] it was already proven by the wiretapped conversations [between former senior Macedonian officials, on tapes released by their opponents] that it was a politically motivated set-up, said Naser Raufi, a lawyer for the defendants.

The SJO, which was set up in 2015 to investigate alleged high-level crimes which came to light in the wiretapped conversations which were released earlier that year, formally asked to take over the case on November 4, 2016.

After much deliberation, it finally got the case this month. The Prosecution for Organised Crime and Corruption handed over the Sopot case to the SJO on July 5. After reviewing the case, the SJO decided on July 10 that the case falls under its jurisdiction, the SJO said last Thursday.

The defence had hoped all along that the SJO would take over the case because it was mentioned by top officials in the wiretaps. Defence lawyers hoped the tapes would shed new light on the crime.

In one of the wiretapped conversations, what were alleged to be the voices of the then Interior Minister Gordana Jankuloska and then Secret Police chief, Saso Mijalkov, could be heard talking about the case.

In the conversation, Jankuloska allegedly suggests to Mijalkov that then Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski should be consulted about how to proceed with this sensitive case and both seem to acknowledge that the conviction of the villagers, who were originally found guilty in 2010, rests on very thin evidence.

It is not excluded that more wiretapped conversations which are now in the hands of the SJO may reveal even more details about the case because in 2015, the then opposition released only a small portion of them.

The mine explosion in Sopot happened in 2003 when Macedonia was still recovering from the 2001 armed conflict between ethnic Albanian insurgents and the security forces.

After a prolonged trial, the 12 defendants were originally sentenced in March 2010 to a total of 150 years in jail, but after Macedonias ethnic Albanian political parties complained, a parliamentary commission decided that there were some omissions during the trial.

The parliamentary commission's decision rested on a claim by one of the defendants, Ramadan Bajrami, that he confessed after being tortured by police.

This resulted in the court ordering a new trial, which was originally supposed to start in 2011.

By 2016, one of the original 12 defendants had died.

The countrys ethnic Albanian political parties have criticised the Sopot case and several others as examples of injustice against Albanians in Macedonia.

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Defence Eyes Breakthrough in Macedonia NATO Killing Case - Balkan Insight

US Army General John Nicholson confirmed the killing of Abu Sayed - the head of the Islamic State group affiliate in Afghanistan. Nicholson said Sayed was killed in an airstrike in Kunar province. (July 15)

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NATO Commander Confirms Killing of Abu Sayed - Fairbanks Daily News-Miner