Israeli's Barak: "Turkey is helping to stop a second flotilla"

Turkey is helping Israel to thwart a second planned Gaza-bound aid flotilla, following the bloodshed of last year's Mavi Marmara flotilla, said Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak over the weekend. "The governments of Greece, (Greek) Cyprus, and Turkey are working to curtail this thing," several Israeli media outlets quoted Barak as saying yesterday. "It's a result of extensive work by the Foreign Ministry, the Defense Ministry and the Prime Minister's Office." In related news, activists have accused Israel of damaging two ships docked in Turkey and Greece that were part of the flotilla. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor dismissed the sabotage charges as "ridiculous," calling them "sad conspiracy theories." Selcuk Unal, a spokesman for the Turkish Foreign Ministry, said authorities had determined that there was no act of sabotage on an Irish vessel in the flotilla that docked in the Port of Gocek on the Aegean Sea.