WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – Thomson said British leaders and those of other NATO nations recognized the dangers of terrorism and other security challenges in the Central Mediterranean and were evolving their thinking “week by week” on how to deal with Daesh, outlawed in Russia, the United States and a plethora of other countries.
“Yeah, I certainly can imagine that; we’re already contributing to the Eastern Mediterranean, the Aegean operation,” Thomson told Defense News in an interview published on Tuesday.
The British government was actively concerned about the threats of terrorism and the disruptions posed by mass migrations of hundreds of thousands of refugees into European NATO nations from the Middle East and North Africa, Thomson continued.
“We as an alliance are having to think very hard about how we contribute to stability on the alliance’s southern periphery, where we’ve seen a mixture of ISIL [Islamic State] and migration present challenges that develop extremely rapidly,” he told the US defense and security newspaper.