NATO chief : ready to help Turkey 'if needed'

NATO is ready to help member state Turkey as the 20-month conflict in Syria is increasingly spilling across the border, the alliance's chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Monday. "Turkey can rely on NATO solidarity, we have more plans in place to defend and protect Turkey, our ally, if needed," Rasmussen told reporters in Prague, but declined to go into details. The NATO secretary general also said the transatlantic military alliance still has not received a request from Turkey for a possible deployment of US-made Patriot anti-aircraft missiles. "But obviously if such a request is to be forwarded the NATO council will have to consider it," he added. Ankara said last week that it was in talks with NATO about the Patriots but had not made any formal request. President Abdullah Gul said last week that Turkey reserved the right to defend itself against any threat from Syria, its one-time ally, but that it was "out of the question" that Ankara would start a war. Syrian forces and rebels have been involved in furious and often deadly fighting in the past week around a Syrian border town, sending thousands more Syrians fleeing into Turkey which has boosted its defences along the volatile frontier. Turkish forces have systematically retaliated to every cross-border shelling since Syrian fire killed five Turkish civilians on October 3.