NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg has said the military alliance will investigate French accusations that Turkey's navy failed to respond to an allied call for inspection this month in the Mediterranean, Al Jazeera reported.
Florence Parly, France's armed forces minister, brought up the incident on Thursday during a meeting of NATO defense chiefs at a time when the two allies have traded barbs over the crisis in Libya, accusing each other of supporting opposing sides in the country's war.
Paris has repeatedly accused Ankara of violating a United Nations arms embargo. Turkey rejects the French accusations and has denied that the incident as described by France ever occurred.
Parly said that on June 10 Turkish warships flashed their radar lights three times at the French warship Courbet in the eastern Mediterranean. She said the Courbet was on a NATO mission to check whether a Turkish vessel, the Cirkin, was smuggling arms to Libya after it turned off its transponder, failed to identify itself and did not give its final destination.
She added that Turkish sailors had also put on bullet-proof vests and stood behind their light weapons during the incident.
Turkish military officials on Thursday rejected the French accusations as baseless.
