Wednesday, October 14, 2009 WASHINGTON: The United States has chided Turkey for canceling a NATO military exercise because Israel also was participating.Neither the Turks nor NATO has confirmed that Israel's participation in the exercises over Turkey was Ankara's reason for pulling out.State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Tuesday, however, "as to the question of whether there was a government that was invited to participate and then removed at the last minute, we think it's inappropriate for any nation to be removed from an exercise like this at the last minute."He was asked whether that was what happened and whether Israel was the spurned country. He confirmed both.Muslim Turkey's traditionally close ties with the Jewish state have cooled since the Israel-Hamas Gaza war in January.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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