NATO gave the green light on Tuesday to a new defense plan for Poland and the Baltic states after a compromise was reached with Turkey which had vetoed it, diplomats announced.
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Ankara has been demanding for months from its partners in the Atlantic Alliance that they provide it with more support in its fight against the Kurdish militiamen in Syria to allow the entry into force of this plan - in fact an update of its previous version which dates back to 2010 - on which an agreement was reached in December.
Its contents are secret, but Lithuanian officials have repeatedly indicated that they are seeking to strengthen air defense and deploy NATO forces more quickly in the event of a crisis. All against a backdrop of tensions with Russia, especially since it annexed in 2014 the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.
" The problem has been solved and the plans are approved, " Linas Linkevicius, the Lithuanian diplomacy chief, told AFP, welcoming Turkey's " constructive action ". Information confirmed in Brussels by a diplomatic source.
Turkish Kurdish rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been waging bloody guerrilla warfare against the Turkish state since 1984, have bases and training camps in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Turkey, which recently deployed special forces to northern Iraq to fight Kurdish rebels, has already carried out several large-scale operations against the PKK or affiliated Kurdish militias in Iraq and Syria.
