Upset with Turkey, Iraq seeks UN Security Council session

As the U.S. military gears up to send more than 600 personnel to northern Iraq to assist in upcoming campaign to seize the city of Mosul from the Islamic State, Baghdad is waging a diplomatic war of its own with Ankara.

Iraq on Thursday demanded that the United Nations Security Council convene an emergency session to discuss the presence of Turkish troops on Iraqi territories near Mosul.

Abdl Hussein, who is also member of the parliamentary committee for foreign affairs, said the Security Council and Arab League are required to stand with Iraq against this breach of sovereignty.

Turkey however, remained defiant, with Prime Minister Binali Yildirim vowing on Thursday to maintain Turkish troop presence “no matter what Baghdad says”.

In December of a year ago, Turkey sent some 150 troops and about two dozen combat tanks to Camp Bashiqa, located some 12 kilometers northeast of ISIL-held Mosul. “On the contrary, it will increase problems”, he said, adding Turkey was ready to support the offensive.

“Those prohibited from participating should include elements of the Popular Mobilization Forces, a group of armed forces allied with the government”, the rights group said. “We have no hostile attitude towards Iraq or its territorial integrity”, Yildirim told reporters in Ankara.

Meanwhile, the presence of Turkish troops near Bashiqa has sent Iraq-Turkey tensions soaring. He warns that the Mosul suburb of Tal Afar, inhabited by the ethnic Turkmen minority, could be turned into rubble by both Shi’ite and Kurdish militias.

Anderson said that once Mosul is declared secure, some Iraqi security forces will be pulled out of the city and retrained and re-equipped to conduct counter-insurgency fights.

Some Iraqi officials stressed the importance of Turkey’s withdrawal from any military operations on the Iraqi territories. Mosul, a large city in northern Iraq, was captured by IS in 2014 and is its last great stronghold in Iraq.

A coalition spokesman claimed the attack was called in by Iraqi troops and killed eight extremists, but added that it was “taking seriously” Sheikh Lihaibi’s accusation.

Islamic State terrorists have built concrete block barriers on the main roads leading out of Mosul’s eastern boundary in expectation of losing control of its neighborhoods near Bashiqa, according to Iraqi media reports.