IHH to be designated a terror organization?
87 US Senators have sent a letter to President Obama urging him to declare the IHH a designated terror organization Surprise: The Obama administration is resisting. According to the Fox News report, US State Department spokesman Mark Toner explained that the US government is examining whether the nongovernmental organization will be considered a terrorist group.The IHH will not be designated on Obama's watch, but it might be designated as a terror organization in the future.
"I believe we are looking at the IHH, but it's a long process to designate something a foreign terrorist organization and ...there's nothing to announce on that," Toner said.
Despite some resistance from within the Obama administration, Fox News sources said that sections of the US Treasury Department are actively investigating the Turkish Muslim charity organization in an attempt to list it as a terror group. The Treasury Department has voiced worries about IHH with Turish officials in the past, yet refused to comment on the alleged considerations.
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Once designating IHH as a terror group, the Turkish government "will be between a rock and a hard place," Dr. Soner Cagaptay, senior fellow and director of the Turkish research program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in Washington, told Fox News.
"Will it ban IHH, to which it has close ties? Or will it choose to ignore the US designation, doing something quite unfitting a NATO ally, therefore creating a serious rift in bilateral ties?" speculated Cagaptay.
Fox News had not received a response from the Turkish Embassy in Washington after the network questioned the possibility of adding IHH as a terror group.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:21 AM
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