CHP slams gov’t refusal to extradite al-Hashemi

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

Tariq al-Hashemi has been convicted of murder and sentenced to death. REUTERS photo

The government’s refusal to extradite Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, who has been convicted of murder and sentenced to death in absentia by an Iraqi court, may be the last straw in bilateral relations between the countries, a main opposition party member has said.

“Instead of acting in line with a state of law identity, the government has made the al-Hashemi case an issue of challenge for sectarian inspirations, merely in a tribal mentality,” Faruk Loğoğlu, deputy chairman of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) said yesterday in a written statement.

The government should have defused the situation and negotiated with the Iraqi government to find a compromise in line with al-Hashemi’s position that he was ready to return to Iraq if fair trial conditions and his safety were provided, Loğoğlu stated.

Ankara’s relations with Baghdad are on the verge of breaking off, the CHP deputy said, adding that Turkey had approached Arbil.

He called on the government to revise Turkey’s foreign policy immediately and base it on international law and good neighborhood principles.

Meanwhile, the main opposition party also criticized European Union Minister Egemen Bağış for not opening any acquis chapters in the negotiations of Turkey with the EU during his term.

“There is not a single chapter issue and title which he has – up to today – negotiated, opened or closed. Therefore Egemen Bağış is an otiose minister,” Erdoğan Toprak, another CHP deputy chair, said in a written statement yesterday.

He slammed Bağış’s recent remarks criticizing CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s statements suggesting that the deadly blast at an ammunition depot in Afyonkarahisar, which killed 25 soldiers on Sept. 5, was sabotage.

Referring to Kılıçdaroğlu’s allegations on the Afyonkarahisar blast, Bağış had said, “Almost 99 percentage of his claims turned up false.”