French MP Says NATO Needs Russian Help to Fight Daesh

NATO’s decision to join the US-led coalition against the Daesh terrorist group (banned in Russia) is undermined by the lack of counterterrorist cooperation with Russia, French lawmaker and member of the legislative defense committee, Nicolas Dhuicq, told Sputnik.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – On Thursday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said following the one-day NATO summit in Brussels that the alliance will join the US-led coalition to defeat the Daesh, which will consist of air-to-air refueling and intelligence sharing, but not deploying ground troops.

"I, personally, believe that the EU security questions cannot be dealt with without Russia. It is unwise to exclude Russia from cooperation against terrorism," Nicolas Dhuicq said.

The lawmaker also questioned the objectives of the alliance since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of the perceived Communist threat.

"From the fall of the Berlin Wall to nowadays, nothing much changed concerning NATO. NATO was designed to be an alliance against the USSR, what was been seen as a Communist threat toward the rest of Europe. Now Russia is a country like any other and the Eastern European countries are either within the European Union or NATO," he stressed.

During the NATO summit on Thursday, the alliance’s leaders also agreed to develop annual national plans which would, in particular, address additional funding in key military capabilities.

Roman Haider, a member of the Austrian parliament from the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), said the NATO defense spending boost would do little in terms of countering the terrorist threat posed by extremist cells and lone wolfs.

"It is absurd, too, to try to decrease the terrorist threat caused by sole offenders by increasing military arming. It is a dangerous and irresponsible game, which Europe has to refuse," Haider told Sputnik.

When addressing the NATO leaders, US President Donald Trump said that the contribution of 2 percent of each of the member states’ GDP toward the alliance’s defense was not enough, and added that the alliance should focus on terrorism, immigration and "threats from Russia and on NATO’s eastern and southern borders."

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday said relations between Russia and the military alliance were "at the deepest crisis since the end of the Cold War." Additionally, the ministry said that NATO's intention to justify its existence by exaggerating the "threat from the East" hinders the unification of states' efforts in the anti-terror struggle.

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