[AnNahar] Germany plans to send Tornado reconnaissance jets to support the fight against the Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group in Syria, the defense front man of Chancellor Angela Merkel
...current chancellor of Germany. She was educated in East Germany when is was still run by commies, but in 1989 got involved with the growing democracy movement when the Berlin Wall fell. Merkel is sometimes referred to by Germans as
Mom...
's conservatives said Thursday.
A day after Merkel pledged in Gay Paree to "soon" decide how to help battle the IS group in Syria, she met cabinet ministers in charge of security ahead of afternoon meetings of the major parties' parliamentary groups.
"Germany will play a more active role than before," said the defense policy front man of her conservative CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Henning Otte, in a statement.
While the government had not yet issued a statement, Otte said Germany would go beyond its current arms supplies and training to Iraqi Kurdish forces combating the IS.
"We are not only strengthening the training mission in northern Iraq, but will step up our commitment in the fight against IS terror, among other things with RECCE reconnaissance Tornados," he said.
The parliamentary groups of Merkel's conservatives as well as of her coalition partners, the center-left Social Democrats, were to meet from 1600 GMT to discuss how to support La Belle France in the battle against IS.
Post-war Germany has been traditionally reluctant to send troops abroad, although it has joined U.N.-mandated missions in the Balkans and elsewhere, and the NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all....
coalition in Afghanistan.
Germany has not taken part in air strikes against the IS in Syria and Iraq flown by U.S. and French aircraft.
Otte said that "the IS can only be defeated militarily, therefore no idea must be ruled out as we engage in the fight against Islamist terrorism".
"Islamist terrorism is a threat to Germany and to world peace. Together with La Belle France and all other countries that oppose Islamist terror, we will provide everything necessary to the battle."
He added that all requests by the alliance against IS and by La Belle France "must be examined with an open mind".
Germany sent fighter aircraft for reconnaissance missions in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2010.