NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg gives a press conference on February 15, 2021, ahead of NATO Defense Ministers’ meetings at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
BORN
WASHINGTON – NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced on Thursday that the 30-member alliance will expand its security training mission in Iraq to prevent the war-torn country from becoming a haven for international terrorists.
“The size of our mission will increase from 500 to about 4,000 and training activities will now include more Iraqi security institutions and areas beyond Baghdad,” Stoltenberg told reporters at the end of a two-day virtual meeting with defense ministers from Nato.
“Our presence is based on conditions and the increase in the number of soldiers will be incremental,” he said, adding that the request to expand the mission was requested by the Iraqi government.
Earlier in the week, a senior defense official told reporters ahead of the NATO meeting that the Pentagon was “excited and welcomes NATO’s growing focus on Iraq”. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not say whether the US military is prepared to contribute more troops to the training mission in Iraq.
The United States has 2,500 soldiers in Iraq.
“ISIS is still operating in Iraq and we need to ensure that they cannot return,” said Stoltenberg on Thursday, adding that the alliance has seen a slight increase in attacks.
The decision to expand NATO’s footprint in Iraq comes in the wake of a deadly rocket attack in the city of Irbil.
A worker cleans broken glass on February 16, 2021 outside a damaged store after a rocket attack the night before in Arbil, the capital of the northern Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq.
Safin Hamed | AFP | Getty Images
Monday’s attack took the life of a civilian contractor and injured nine others, including a member of the US service, according to US Army Colonel Wayne Marotto, a spokesman for the ISIS anti-coalition coalition.
A Shi’ite group called Awliya Al Dam has taken responsibility for the attack and is believed to be a front for an Iran-backed militia group. The White House, the Pentagon and the State Department have not publicly confirmed who is behind the attack.
The State Department on Wednesday promised to impose consequences on those responsible, but gave few details.
“We are not going to predict a response, but it is fair to say that there will be consequences for any group responsible for this attack,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters during a news conference.
“Any response we receive will be in full coordination with the Iraqi government and also with our coalition partners,” he added.
The day after the attack, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the White House was “outraged” by the violence in Iraq.
Psaki also said that the Biden government is working with partners in the region to conduct an investigation into the attack.