Turkey sought a fresh condemnation of Israel over its deadly raid on Gaza-bound aid ships as regional leaders gathered in Istanbul Tuesday to discuss security in Asia. Presidents Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Bashar Al-Assad of Syria, Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan as well as Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin attended the talks. “There will probably be a condemnation of Israel in the final declaration,” a Turkish diplomat said. Nine Turks were killed when Israeli forces raided a flotilla carrying aid to the besieged Gaza Strip on May 31, sparking global outrage and plunging already strained ties with NATO member Turkey, once a close ally, into deep crisis. “The consequences of acts undertaken with feelings of hatred and vengeance are obvious. Unfortunately, we saw a merciless example of that recently,” Turkish President Abdullah Gul said at Tuesday's summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA). “We must definitely say ‘stop' to this tendency which is extremely worrying with respect to international peace and security,” he said. Speaking on the sidelines of the gathering, Putin said that Russia would raise the controversial issue of who should investigate Israel's deadly raid on the flotilla at the United Nations. “We are deeply worried by such a crude violation of the universally recognized norms of international law,” he told reporters, stressing the raid took place in international waters in the Mediterranean. “We can't allow a new flame to flare up in the Middle East... We will raise the issue at the United Nations, we're working at it,” he said. Turkey said Monday that normalisation of ties with Israel would be “out of the question” if it failed to agree to an international probe into the bloody operation, a move the Jewish state has so far rejected. US backs int'l role in flotilla probe The United States backed calls for international participation in Israel's probe into its deadly raid on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla saying it was “essential” to ensure credibility. “We understand that the international participation in investigating these matters will be important to the credibility everybody wants to see,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said. “We recognize that international participation... would be an essential element to putting this tragedy behind us and then hopefully creating some additional trust and momentum to get us to our ultimate destination, which is an agreement that ends the conflict once and for all.” “We're in conversation with (the) Israelis and others about how to best accomplish this,” Crowley added.
