NATO will investigate the standoff between the French and Turkish navies in the Mediterranean, the bloc's secretary-general said today, after France accused its NATO ally this week of violating a United Nations arms embargo on Libya. 

“The incident in the Mediterranean was addressed in the meeting by several allies,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said during a news conference that followed a meeting of the bloc’s defense ministers. “My message is that we have made sure that NATO military authorities are investigating the incident to bring full clarity into what happened.” 

France on Wednesday accused Turkey’s navy of harassing its warship, the Courbet, as it tried to inspect a cargo vessel in the eastern Mediterranean suspected of transporting arms to Libya. According to the French Defense Ministry, Turkish frigates carried out radar targeting three times when the Courbet approached the civilian cargo ship. 

A French Defense Ministry official described the incident to Agence France-Presse as an “extremely aggressive” act. "We cannot accept that an ally behaves this way, that it does this against a NATO ship, under NATO command, carrying out a NATO mission."