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US Pentagon chief said he felt 'welcomed' on European tour by Staff Writers Washington (AFP) Feb 17, 2019 Acting Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan on Saturday 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 dialog 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 Islamic State (IS) jihadist group to help secure Syria once US soldiers pull out. As the end neared for IS proto-state that once controlled large areas of Iraq and Syria, 13 defense ministers of the anti-IS 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 (IS)" -- but gave no details about how this would be done.
Pompeo pledges Slovakia support on latest stop to curb Russia, China Bratislava (AFP) Feb 12, 2019 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promised Tuesday that the United States would support Slovakia's security and economy on his latest stop on a Central European tour aimed at curbing the growing influence of Russia and China. Pompeo, the first US secretary of state to visit Slovakia in 14 years, told President Andrej Kiska as they met: "It's been too long since America has been deeply engaged here." A day after talks in Hungary, Pompeo is seeking to highlight the US role in the fall of communism th ... read more
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