BRUSSELS (EJP)— NATO leaders, who met Thursday in Brussels in the presence of US President Donald Trump, said that the Atlantic Alliance will join the fight against the Islamic State.
Terrorism was a key topic at the summit in the aftermath of the bombing at the Manchester pop concert which killed 22 people, including many young people.
Stoltenberg underscored that “it does not mean that NATO will engage in combat operations.”
The alliance will instead establish a new intelligence unit to track foreign fighters in Europe and appoint a counterterrorism coordinator.
Every nation among the alliance’s 28 member states already supports the effort in Iraq and Syria in some way, and several fly daily bombing missions targeting the terrorist group. In addition, some NATO countries, like France and the U.K., have special operations forces operating on the ground in Iraq and Syria.
Trump came to Brussels on his first foreign trip as president to push NATO allies to take on a more active role, having dubbed the Cold War-era alliance "obsolete" for failing to focus on the threat from Islamist terrorism.
Stoltenberg said that NATO would expand the role of its AWACS surveillance planes in supporting anti-IS operations and step up its training programs in Iraq.
A special cell would be set up at NATO headquarters in Brussels to coordinate anti-terror intelligence and planning, he said.
He said the allies would also meet Tusk's demands to share more of the security burden and reaffirm a commitment to spend two percent of annual GDP on defense.