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SHOOTING AT THE FLAG - BRITAIN APOLOGISES
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Michael Coy / 2009-11-21 13:45:38

BREAKING NEWS – Saturday (am) The British government has apologised through its Ambassador to Spain for the incident which occurred on Wednesday (18 November) when Royal Navy personnel were caught firing heavy machine-guns at a buoy bearing the Spanish flag.
It appears that a senior Spanish diplomat, Luis Felipe de la Peña, summoned the British Ambassador to a meeting on Friday, at which a formal protest was registered. Britain apologized for “an error of judgment and a lack of sensitivity” on the part of the Royal Navy crew which used the flag of Spain as target practice during an exercise.
Tags: Gibraltar
Monty 21-11-2009 / 16:48
They did NOT use the spanish flag.
They used a bouy which for identification purposes is always colour coded.
Only 1 bouy was deployed, so it was (following international agreed procedures) numbered '1'. As a result it was in the colour scheme agreed by NATO (of which spain claims to be a committed member) for bouy number 1.
This colour scheme has some similarity to the spanish flag colours. However, the same bouy has long been used for the same purpose by NATO around the world.
This is nothing more than an attempted to further stir things up by the spanish military by presenting the status quo as something new and offensive. Obviously they are unhappy about the improved political relations between the government of Spain and the government of Gibraltar.