ZAGREB— Croatia's prime minister Saturday urged closer cooperation within
NATO after a military drone, which he said was launched from Ukraine, crashed in Zagreb.
اضافة اعلان
The
Soviet-era Tu-141 reconnaissance drone
crashed in the Croatian capital late Thursday, damaging around 40 parked
vehicles, but no one was injured.
It entered Croatia's airspace from Hungary,
having flown in from
Romania, officials said earlier.
All three countries are NATO members.
"According to what we know now it was
obviously launched on Ukraine's territory", Prime Minister
Andrej Plenkovic told reporters on Saturday.
"We don't know in whose possession it
was," he said, adding that both Ukraine and Russia claimed it was not
theirs.
Plenkovic, speaking at the site of the
incident, said he had sent a letter to his EU counterparts and NATO Secretary-General
Jens Stoltenberg over the incident.
"Whether it was accidental, a mistake,
or intentional, we do not know at this moment."
The incident "points to the need for
closer cooperation within NATO", he said. He stressed the drone flew
undisturbed over the alliance's three member states.
"We cannot tolerate such a situation
anymore," the prime minister said.
"It was a very clear threat that
requires a reaction."
According to officials, the drone flew over
Hungary and Croatia before crashing.
Local security experts immediately labeled
the incident a NATO failure. President Zoran Milanovic said Friday "it's a
matter of NATO joint command".
On Friday, a NATO official told AFP that the
military alliance's "integrated air and missile defense tracked the flight
path of an object which subsequently crashed in Zagreb".
The drone crashed around 11:00 pm (2200 GMT)
Thursday in a park close to the Jarun lake.
Some 6km from the city center, the site is
just next to a student residence with some 4,500 people and residential
buildings.
The 14m drone, weighing more than six
tonnes, still has to be dug out from a crater that it made when crashing.
Zagreb is located some 550km flying distance
from the border with Ukraine, which Russia invaded on February 24.
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