Munich: Acting US Secretary of Defence Patrick Shanahan said on Friday the United States wants to support the fight against the IS extremist group in regions other than Iraq and Syria.
Speaking on the first day of the Munich Security Conference, Shanahan pointed to Afghanistan, the Philippines and the Sahel region as places where the militant group had gained a foothold and needed to be curbed.
Shanahan said that, even after the US troop withdrawal from Syria, the US would continue to support its partners in the region in the battle against the militants.
German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said the nature of the threat emanating from IS is changing now that it has lost most of its territory in Iraq and Syria.
“The fact remains that the face of IS is currently changing, that it is going underground and building networks there that are part of a global organisational structure,” von der Leyen said.
Von der Leyen launched the Munich conference on Friday alongside her British counterpart, Gavin Williamson, with some 30 heads of state and government and 90 government ministers planning to attend.
Before his departure for Munich, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the conference would serve as an opportunity to demonstrate Germany’s commitment to international cooperation.
“We know that national self-determination is only possible against the backdrop of international coordination,” Maas said. “I will therefore campaign for doubling down on our commitment to the international order.”
Also ahead of the conference, von der Leyen said she wanted to avoid another altercation with the United States over Germany’s defence spending.
Germany has been under pressure from the US and other Nato members to increase its military spending to 2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in line with a target agreed by Nato members in 2014.
“The demands... are justified. We must do more in the alliance which serves our protection,” von der Leyen told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, adding that Germany had already increased its military spending by 36 per cent in the last six years.
The topics expected to dominate the conference include the state of trans-Atlantic relations, increasing tensions between Russia and the West and the conflicts in the Middle East.
Europe must prepare itself for an “arms race” and new geopolitical challenges, conference head Wolfgang Ischinger said ahead of the event.
“We Europeans had better prepare ourselves when it comes to foreign, security and defence policy,” Ischinger told German public broadcaster ZDF, adding that Europe had long suffered from the delusion that it is surrounded by friends and allies. — dpa
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