WASHINGTON, Feb 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) – Acting Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan said he felt “very welcomed” during his trip this week to NATO
headquarters in Brussels and a major security conference in Germany.
“My takeaway is that I felt very welcomed and it was a very inclusive
environment,” Shanahan said, speaking aboard the airplane bringing him home from a three-day international security conference in Munich.
“I was expecting something different. I was expecting them to be a bit
more stand-offish,” he said, a reference to criticism from allies over
President Donald Trump’s unilateral decision to pull some 2,000 US troops
from Syria.
“The type of dialogue and discourse was very frank. I like those types of
meetings,” he said.
He said that the Pentagon, in coordination with the State Department, will
look at the issues raised by Europeans “so we can resolve these constraints
and be able to answer a number of the questions… so we can do more
planning.”
Shanahan on Friday struggled to convince skeptical allies in the
international coalition against the Daesh group to help secure Syria once US soldiers pull out.
As the end neared for Daesh proto-state that once controlled large areas of
Iraq and Syria, 13 defense ministers of the anti-Daesh coalition met on the
sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
Shanahan pledged ongoing backing for the fight — but kept allies guessing
as to how that would be achieved once US forces pull out, and won no solid
pledges of support.
Shanahan pledged that the US would “maintain our counterterrorism
capabilities in the region” and “continue to support our local partners’
ability to stand up to the remnants of (Daesh)” — but gave no details about how this would be done. — NNN-AGENCIES
