ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey’s foreign minister told his Lebanese counterpart on Wednesday that Ankara stood with Lebanon against attacks by Israel targeting the militant Hezbollah group in the country, a Turkish diplomatic source said.
A NATO member, Turkey has denounced Israel’s devastating military offensive in Gaza prompted by Palestinian militant group Hamas’ cross-border attack on Oct. 7 last year.
Turkey halted all trade with Israel and applied to join a genocide case against Israel at the World Court. Israel has said the genocide accusations are baseless.
President Tayyip Erdogan has also condemned Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory, which Israel says are targeting Hezbollah fighters and infrastructure, and demanded international steps to halt Israel’s war in Gaza and cross-border fire with Hezbollah.
In a meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told Lebanon’s Abdallah Bou Habib that Israel’s attacks in Lebanon were “unacceptable” and meant to “drag the region into chaos”, according to the Turkish diplomatic source.
Bou Habib thanked Fidan for a Turkish shipment of medicine that arrived in Lebanon on Wednesday, the source added, and also briefed Fidan on the latest developments in Lebanon.
Separately, Fidan told a G20 foreign ministers meeting in New York that it was unclear whether the cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah would spread further, though the world was facing a wider conflict.
Fidan also reiterated Ankara’s long-standing call to reform the U.N. Security Council to make it “fully effective”, adding Turkey wanted to see a structure in which “one country’s veto does not determine another’s destiny”, the source added.
The United States, Russia, China, France and Britain are the permanent, veto-wielding members of the Security Council. There are 10 non-permanent members that serve two-year terms.
(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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