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Eurasia
June 21, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 19
Trump tells world to ‘wait and see’ how US will respond to Iran shooting down drone bne IntelliNews
Exactly how the US will respond to Iran shooting down an American Global Hawk spy drone with a sur- face to air missile in the early hours of June 20 was left deliberately unclear by President Donald Trump after he met with his national security advisers.
Trump suggested the action could have been carried out by a “loose and stupid” Iranian of- ficer with no authorisation from Tehran. Iranian officials (who released unverified footage of the incident) said that the shooting down was a de- liberate act that took place after the aircraft flew into Iranian airspace near the Strait of Hormuz. The US denied that it left international airspace,
The Global Hawk spy drone is an expensive piece of equipment at $130mn a pop.
with Trump saying his officials had documentary evidence that that was the case. Iran claimed it would take the breaching of its airspace to the UN security council.
In further remarks to reporters outside the White House, Trump said: “I would imagine it was a gen- eral or somebody that made a mistake in shoot- ing that drone down. I find it hard to believe it was intentional if you want to know the truth. I think
it could have been somebody who was loose and stupid that did it. It was a very foolish move.”
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Georgian protesters attempt to storm parliament after "protocol blunder" with Russian MP
bne IntelliNews
Thousands of protesters attempted to storm
Georgia’s parliament in Tbilisi on June 20 after angry demonstrations were sparked when word spread that a Russian lawmaker was giving
a speech from the speaker’s chair inside the legislature.
By late evening, AFP was quoting an advisor to Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze as saying
39 police officers and 30 protesters had been hospitalised with injuries. Hundreds were arrested.
After hours of growing confrontations in front of the parliament, riot police stopped protesters
from entering the building, reportedly using tear gas and rubber bullets.
The Russian MP, Sergei Gavrilov, was attending a meeting of the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy (IAO) — an organisation gathering representatives from largely former communist countries, initiated and hosted by Greece. He addressed delegates in Russian.
Opposition parties and civil society organisations have already announced more protests for June 21.
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