U.S., Turkey discuss rebel air support
ISTANBUL — The United States and Turkey have agreed “in principle” to give air support to some forces from Syria’s mainstream opposition, Turkey’s foreign minister said Monday.
U.S. officials acknowledged ongoing discussions with Turkey about a range of options to step up the fight against Islamic State but said no decisions had been made.
Washington has so far refrained from committing to enforcing a “safe zone” for Syrian rebels, as it could be seen as a declaration of war on the Syrian state.
The air support would protect Syrian rebel forces who have been trained by a U.S.led program on Turkish territory, said minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. The long-delayed scheme is meant to send 15,000 troops back to Syria to fight Islamic State militants.
British PM outlines voting
LONDON — Britain’s prime minister on Monday outlined who will be allowed to vote in a referendum on whether Britain should remain in the European Union, opting to exclude most voters from the other 27 EU nations living in the U.K.
Prime Minister David Cameron announced the parameters ahead of introducing legislation Thursday in Parliament to organize the ballot. No date has been set for it yet, but Mr. Cameron is committed to holding the referendum by 2017.
Mr. Cameron said U.K.-resident citizens of four other EU members — Ireland, Commonwealth members Cyprus and Malta, and the U.K.’s own territory of Gibraltar — will be eligible to vote, but citizens from 24 other EU nations will not.
This means more than half of eligible voters among the 2.8 million non-British EU citizens living in the U.K. will be denied a ballot.
Russia stages exercise
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered four days of air combat readiness testing on Monday, the third major military exercise staged by the Kremlin in the past three months.
The drills will involve 12,000 troops, 250 aircraft and nearly 700 artillery pieces and other heavy weaponry and include cruise missile strikes at an imaginary enemy target at a Siberian firing range.
About 100 fighter jets and 4,000 military personnel from the U.S. and eight European countries began exercises over the Arctic on Monday.
Olmert prison sentence
JERUSALEM — Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was sentenced Monday to eight months in prison for unlawfully accepting money from a U.S. supporter, capping the dramatic downfall of a man who only years earlier led the country and hoped to bring about a historic peace agreement with the Palestinians.
Olmert was convicted in March in a retrial in Jerusalem District Court. The sentencing comes in addition to a six-year prison sentence he received last year in a separate bribery conviction, ensuring the end of the former premier’s political career.
Also in the world …
A Taliban suicide bomber in a truck loaded with explosives struck a provincial government neighborhood in Zabul in southern Afghanistan on Monday, wounding nearly 70 people. … Local Sunni Muslim militia ejected Shi'ite Houthi rebels from much of the southern Yemeni city of Dalea on Monday, inflicting the first significant setback on the Iranianbacked rebels in two months of civil war. … A new law that forces some women in Myanmar to have children at least three years apart was criticized Monday by rights groups who say it will be used to target the country’s minority Muslim population.