Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speak at the NATO defense ministerial conference, at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, October 24, 2019.
Transcript
Good morning, hello.
Hello Secretary General, good to see you.
Welcome, good to see you here again. Welcome to NATO headquarters.
Thank you, very much.
We shake hands once again and have our pictures taken.
Absolutely.
So, it’s great to have you here and welcome to the NATO Defense Ministry. We think we will address a wide range of issues today and tomorrow, including the situation in northeast Syria. We are all of course concerned about the risk of jeopardizing the progress we have made in the fight against ISIS, but we also welcome the progress we’ve seen in the last days with significant reduction in violence. We have to build on that to make further progress and make sure that we continue our fight against our joint enemy, ISIS. We’ll also discuss the ongoing NATO mission in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both in Iraq and Afghanistan, the NATO mission is about making sure that we continue to fight international terrorism and that ISIS is not able to come back. Then, NATO readiness, increase readiness of forces is high on our agenda. And of course, as always when we meet, burden sharing, the importance of European allies and Canada investing more in defense will also be an important issue for this meeting. And we recognize the progress we are making with $100 billion more from European allies and Canada but we need to do even better and that’s why we continue to stress burden sharing. Welcome.
Thank you again Mr. Secretary General for being here. Your leadership with the alliance is superb and we really appreciate all that you do. As some of you know, I arrived from the Middle East last night. During my tour in the previous two days, I had the chance to visit Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. In Afghanistan I had the great privilege of visiting with our troops and our partners to see how well they’re doing helping enable the Afghanistan National Defense and Security Forces improve their own security. Doing a superb job there. I had the chance to visit Saudi Arabia where I met with United States troops on the ground, helping Saudi Arabia defend itself from Iranian provocation and on a bilateral fashion I will be urging several of my NATO partners to consider also contributing (inaudible) and other defensive assets to help again prevent conflict in the region. I also had the privilege of stopping in Iraq the day prior and I can tell you that NATO mission Iraq is doing a fantastic job helping Iraq improve the performance of its forces and modernize its defensive institutions. You mentioned northeast Syria, obviously a lot has changed on the ground in the past week or so. I think we need to sit down and discuss how we recalibrate the defeat ISIS mission so that we ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS. Then lastly, as you mentioned, I hope to discuss in great detail how we can further improve the readiness of the alliance and increase burden sharing. So I look forward to a very productive and candid and constructive meeting these next couple days and as always we are fully committed to the NATO alliance and I want to reassure everybody of that.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Welcome.