BICOM

Foreign Secretary William Hague yesterday condemned the shooting down of a Turkish military plane by Syria last week. Responding to the incident, Hague said he was “gravely concerned” by the Syrian regime’s shooting down of a Turkish military plane. He described the incident as “outrageous” and said the act “underlined how far beyond acceptable behaviour the Syrian regime has put itself … The Assad regime should not make the mistake of believing that it can act with impunity. It will be held to account for its behaviour.

NATO ambassadors will meet on Tuesday to discuss whether to respond to Syria’s aggression. Although the likelihood for any military action is low, the plane’s downing has further increased regional tensions over the conflict in Syria, where some 40 people were said to have died Sunday in new clashes between rebels and regime forces.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is also expected to make a statement Tuesday and might announce some retaliatory steps. “No one should dare to test Turkey’s capabilities,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Sunday. He said the plane was testing Turkey’s radar capabilities, not spying on Syria, when it was shot down. He added that the plane had mistakenly strayed into Syrian airspace Friday, but was quickly warned to leave by Turkish authorities and was a mile inside international airspace when it was shot down off the coast of Latakia.

The plane’s downing also drew strong criticism from other countries pushing Syrian President Bashar Assad to end his crack down on an increasingly armed popular uprising. Opposition activists say the conflict has killed around 14,000 people, most of them civilians, over the past 16 months.