(TKG) — According to media reports, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday that the alliance must scale up its military training operation in Iraq to ensure that its members are not drawn back into combat against the Islamic State extremists.
Mr. Stoltenberg has held talks in recent days with senior Iraqi and officials and King Abdullah of Jordan and sought NATO alliance for resuming its training activities in Iraq in the near future.
“We need to go heavy in and train. Build everything from the ministry of defense, institutions, command and control, to train forces. NATO can do that. We already do it, but we can scale up,” Stoltenberg told members of the European Parliament in Brussels on Tuesday.
NATO agreed in 2018 to launch a training mission in Iraq involving around 500 troops with the aim of building up the country’s armed forces so they could better combat extremist groups, but the mission was suspended after a U.S. missile strike at Baghdad airport killed Iran’s top general earlier this month and the Iraqi government demanded that foreign troops leave its territory.
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