NATO mulls potential defence capacity-building roles in Iraq, Libya

摘要

NATO foreign ministers gave the nod at their 19-20 May meeting in Brussels for the alliance to set up bilateral teams of experts with Iraq and Libya to explore how NATO can help with training and other defence-related tasks for these countries. They also agreed to expand NATO's maritime role in the central Mediterranean to include counter-terrorism, sea-lane protection, and other tasks. "We agreed to send an assessment team as soon as possible to Iraq [that would] ensure that any efforts we do there complement what the global anti-Daesh coalition is doing," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on 19 May, referring to the US-led military campaign against the so-called Islamic State, also known as ISIL and its Arabic acronym Daesh.