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From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Fri May 06 2011 - 01:43:22 EDT
Gibraltar Slams New 'Incursion' By Spanish Navy
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=6403538&c=EUR&s=SEA
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Published: 3 May 2011 18:57
GIBRALTAR - The Gibraltar
government<http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=6403538&c=EUR&s=SEA#>condemned
as "provocative and unlawful" an incident on May 3 in which it
said a Spanish naval vessel incurred into its territorial waters and then
called on commercial ships to leave the area.
Tensions in the disputed waters off the tiny British territory were already
high since an incident on April 23 involving Spanish and Gibraltar police
vessels.
Related Topics
A British military spokesman in the rocky promontory off southern Spain said
the Royal Navy issued two radio warnings to the Spanish patrol boat
"Atalaya" to leave after it entered the area the morning of May 3.
The Royal Navy then dispatched a fast inflatable
boat<http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=6403538&c=EUR&s=SEA#>followed
by a bigger, armed vessel, HMS Scimitar, the spokesman said. He
said the Atalaya left about 90 minutes after it arrived.
The Gibraltar government also charged that "the Spanish vessel approached
and contacted all merchant shipping on the eastside of the Rock within
British Gibraltar Territorial Waters and ordered them to raise anchors and
to leave since they did not have permission to be in Spanish waters.
"The Gibraltar Port Authority directed all vessels to remain at their
anchorage, which they did," it said in a statement.
The Gibraltar government "condemns the provocative and unlawful actions by
the Spanish Navy
Corvette<http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=6403538&c=EUR&s=SEA#>'Atalaya'
in British Gibraltar Territorial Waters."
There was no immediate comment from Madrid to the charges.
It was the latest in a series of maritime face-offs in the waters off
Gibraltar over the last two years.
The most recent occurred on April 23, when Gibraltar police charged one of
its boats was damaged in a clash with Spanish police vessels that illegally
entered its waters in pursuit of alleged drug traffickers.
Spain's government complained to Britain over that incident, while Spain's
Civil Guard police force charged its officers were subjected to "insults and
threats" by those on the Gibraltar police boat.
In a similar incident to what happened May 3, a Spanish navy patrol boat
entered Gibraltar waters in May 2009 and inspected fishing boats.
Britain claims a strip of three nautical miles (5.5 kilometres) surrounding
Gibraltar as its territorial waters. But Spain does not recognize any waters
off Gibraltar as belonging to the territory apart from its ports.
Gibraltar, which Madrid ceded to London in 1713 under the Treaty of Utrecht,
has long fuelled tensions between the two countries.
Madrid argues the 6.5-square-kilometre (2.6-square-mile) territory that is
home to around 30,000 people should be returned to Spanish sovereignty.
But its people overwhelmingly rejected an Anglo-Spanish proposal for
co-sovereignty in a referendum in 2002.
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