?NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (L) and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte talk during their meeting in The Hague, the Netherlands, April 19, 2018. Stoltenberg on Thursday said the Netherlands should spend more on defense and send more soldiers to Iraq to train the army there. (Xinhua/Sylvia Lederer)
THE HAGUE, April 19 (Xinhua) -- NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday said the Netherlands should spend more on defense and send more soldiers to Iraq to train the army there.
He acknowledged the Netherlands had increased defense spending. "We expect more, this is about what is fair," he told the Dutch House of Representatives.
"In 2014, we agreed not to cut back on defense, but to invest more," said Stoltenberg, referring to the NATO summit in Wales in 2014 when the Netherlands agreed to spend 2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense.
The Dutch cabinet sworn in last October has promised to boost defense budget to over 1.5 billion euros (1.85 billion U.S. dollars) per year. But, partly in view of the growth of the economy, it does not hit the threshold of 2 percent of GDP.
After a working lunch with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Stoltenberg said more Dutch trainers are needed in Iraq.
Strengthening local armed forces is one of the best weapons in the fight against terrorism and Dutch trainers always deliver "high quality" and have good material for these kinds of missions, said Stoltenberg.
In recent years, the Dutch have trained Kurds in northern Iraq and special forces in Baghdad in the context of the fight of an international coalition against the Islamic State (IS).???
