Obama said Dallas shooter Micah Johnson, 25, who was killed in a standoff with police, was “demented” and did not represent African Americans. We mourn those who protect us and lose their lives”, adding that “there are going to be circumstances in which they have to make split-second decisions.
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On the second day of their gathering in Warsaw, NATO country leaders also declared the alliance would extend its Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan beyond 2016.
With President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron soon to be out of office and elections next year in France and Germany, the world’s uncertain future was a dominant theme of the two-day summit.
The U.S. has pledged to provide US$3.5 billion annually to fund Afghan forces, and the government in Kabul is expected to contribute as much as US$500 million.
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies are poised to formally expand the alliance’s commitment of forces and support to the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, just days after Obama announced he would keep 8,400 USA forces in the country, rather than cut the number to 5,500 as he had once planned.
Dallas police officers lay flowers at a makeshift memorial.
Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Saturday announced the military alliance would help its partners fight against the so-called Islamic State, provide AWACS surveillance aircraft to help tackle terrorism, and would launch a new security operation in the Mediterranean named Sea Guardian. But he said there will be fewer US troops training Afghan conventional forces, although the USA will still send teams into the regions to assist the army and police. The continued support from Western countries reflects the worries about Afghanistan ” s security situation, at a time when Taliban forces continue to challenge Afghan forces, and IS has established a foothold in the country ” s south and east. “It will be a little less than what it has been to this point, so there will be less doing that TAA [train, advise and assist] in that area”, Scaparrotti said.
The United States and European Union have both imposed sanctions on Moscow over the Ukraine crisis but in Europe, in particular, there are growing calls for them to be scaled back.
Those moves were strongly criticized Saturday by Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet president during the Cold War.
“All the rhetoric used in Warsaw is nearly a declaration of war against Russia”, he said to Russian news agency Interfax, adding that “the Cold War is preparing to get hot”.
The comments marked the third time in as many days that Obama has spoken, from a distance, about the police-involved fatal shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota that were followed by a sniper attack in Dallas that killed five police officers.
He reminded that the Alliance had agreed on reinforcement of its collective defence and on deploying forces in Poland and Baltic states.
They include prominent members of the Republican Party, which has often jumped to the defense of law enforcement in the face of accusations of racial bias.
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“The President has accepted an invitation from Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings to travel to Dallas early next week”, the White House said in a statement.
