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Nato leaders risk clash with Trump over support for anti-Isil coalition

Donald Trump is expected to demand more spending from Nato members on defence at a Summit in Brussels on Thursday - AP
Donald Trump is expected to demand more spending from Nato members on defence at a Summit in Brussels on Thursday - AP

Nato leaders are risking a diplomatic showdown with the US president Donald Trump after France and Germany resisted US demands for the alliance to take a formal role in the war against the Islamic State group, it has emerged.

 The dispute over whether Nato should join the US-led coalition against Isil threatens to overshadow Thursday’s Nato summit in Brussels where Mr Trump will meet attend his first formal meeting of alliance leaders.

 US demands will be given added weight and urgency by the bomb attack in Manchester, with Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary-general promising that counter-terrorism would be top of the agenda for leaders.

 “I expect Nato allies to step up and agree to do more in the fight against terrorism, not least because of what we saw in Manchester on Monday," he said.

 However Mr Stoltenberg admitted that with only 24 hours to go before the summit opened Nato leaders were “still discussing” the US proposal to join the terror coalition, with diplomatic sources reporting frantic behind-the-scenes efforts to broker a compromise.

 France and Germany have led the resistance to US demands, fearing that the alliance will be sucked into another grinding campaign in the Middle East and could be stuck with a long-lasting responsibility for securing Iraq.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a media conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday, May 24, 2017.  - Credit: AP
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a media conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday, May 24, 2017. Credit: AP

 All 28 Nato members are already taking part in the Coalition on an individual basis, but Mr Stoltenberg indicated that the US was pushing for a political demonstration of support for other Nato members.

 “[Nato membership of the Coalition would] send a strong and clear message of unity in fight against terrorism and in light of attacks in Manchester it’s important that we send this clear message that we are united in the fight against terrorism,” he said.

 Ruling out an combat role in Iraq for the alliance, Mr Stoltenberg added that Nato has agreed to provide more AWACS airborne radar and air-to-air refuelling support to the international campaign and would be sending an additional 13,000 troops to Afghanistan to train local counter-terror forces.

 For its part, Britain is likely to offer around 100 more soldiers to join around 500 who are already training officer cadets in Kabul.

Nato-trained Afghan forces parade in 2012. Now Nato is to expand its training mission by 13,000 troops. - Credit: AP
Nato-trained Afghan forces parade in 2012. Now Nato is to expand its training mission by 13,000 troops. Credit: AP

Senior EU defence source told the Telegraph that France and Germany were still “unconvinced” about the merits of Nato joining the US-led coalition, with France in particular concerned that it will be left sharing a disproportionate amount of the costs when it is already engaged in an anti-terror campaign in the Sahel.

The source added that a compromise was being worked on in order to avoid an embarrassing split appearing at Thursday’s summit which was intended as a display of unity with Mr Trump who called Nato “obsolete” during his 2016 election campaign.

The mercurial US president has since retracted that remark and this week published a budget that included a 40% increase in US defence spending in Europe - a clear demonstration, Mr Stoltenberg said, of America’s enduring commitment to Europe’s defence.

Still, Mr Trump has made clear his continued dissatisfaction at spending levels of many Nato member states, including Germany, whose chancellor Angela Merkel was taken to task over the issue by Mr Trump on her visit to Washington earlier this year.

 "It's not fair that we're paying close to 4 percent and other countries that are more directly affected are paying 1 percent when they're supposed to be paying 2 percent," Mr Trump said in an interview last month.

Nato is offering to increase its AWACS and air-to-air refueling contribution to the US-led anti-Isil coalition - Credit: RAF
Nato is offering to increase its AWACS and air-to-air refueling contribution to the US-led anti-Isil coalition Credit: RAF

 Nato members have committed to hitting the 2pc of GDP spending target by 2024, with an additional $10bn dollars spent in 2016, but questions remain over how much hard capability the new spending will deliver.

 Leading analysts have warned that the Trump presidency presents a unique threat to Nato as the US continues to question whether propping up European defence is a strategic priority given the economic and geopolitical rebalancing triggered by the rise of China.

 Tomas Valasek, a former Slovak ambassador to NATO and now head of the Carnegie Europe think-tank argued in a recent policy paper that Mr Trump represented a “dramatically different” view of Nato than European members have seen before.

An aerial view of the new NATO Headquarters in Brussels - Credit: Reuters/handout
An aerial view of the new NATO Headquarters in Brussels Credit: Reuters/handout

 “Trump has challenged the idea that active engagement in Europe is a core U.S. interest. He appears to regard all foreign relations as zero-sum transactions, in which each contribution to someone else’s security represents a net loss to the United States,” he wrote.

 Given the stakes, Nato diplomats described the heads of government meeting - which is not formally classified as a summit and so will not deliver a final communique - as “more pomp than policy”, with Mr Trump honoured by helping to open the alliance’s new €1bn euro headquarters.

 Mr Trump will unveil a piece of the former World Trade Centre at the Nato HQ as a memorial to the September 11 attacks which were the only time in Nato's 68-year history that the alliance has invoked its Article 5 collective defence clause.

 There will also be a fly-past from Nato jets and Mrs Merkel will open a memorial to the Berlin wall, commemorating the Cold War which spawned the alliance in the first place.

 "This is not about policy, it's about political messaging," one senior Nato diplomat told Reuters. "Let's make Trump happy."

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