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Baghdad turns to UN for condemning Turkish troops in Iraq

Xinhua, December 10, 2015 Adjust font size:

Iraq on Thursday contacted the five permanent member states of the UN Security Council for condemning Turkey's deployment of troops on Iraqi soil, the foreign ministry said.

Iraq also demanded an Arab League extraordinary session to "discuss the consequences of the Turkish breach (to Iraqi sovereignty) and adopt an Arab stance against it," according to a ministry spokesman.

The crisis between the two countries sparked last Friday when reports said a Turkish training battalion equipped with armored vehicles was deployed near the city of Mosul to train Iraqi paramilitary groups in fighting the Islamic State (IS) terrorist militant group.

Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, has been under IS control since June 2014.

Baghdad has insisted that the Turkish troops had no authorization from the Iraqi government and thus demanded their withdrawal, while Ankara called the troops only a routine rotation of the trainers.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is pressured by Shiite militias who are angry over foreign troops in the country, as they are instrumental in Iraq's anti-IS campaign Endit