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UK foreign secretary urges New Zealand to join Islamic State fight

Xinhua, February 3, 2015 Adjust font size:

Visiting British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond on Tuesday said he expected New Zealand to join an international coalition to fight Islamic State insurgents in the Middle East.

Hammond said at a televised press conference in Parliament that New Zealand was expected to join the coalition against militant Islamism as "part of the family."

"Frankly, we've got used to New Zealand being there alongside us -- alongside the U.S., the UK, Australia as part of the family, " said Hammond.

"You have capable armed forces, highly inter-operable with ours, with the Australians, with the Americans. We would very much hope that New Zealand will be an active participant in a fight which is all of our fight."

Hammond said he had discussed a range of issues in meetings with Prime Minister John Key and Foreign Secretary Murray McCully, but they also "talked about how we can work together to counter the threat from ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) in Iraq and Syria and the threat from extremist militant Islamism around the world wherever it shows its face."

"I think we've all been shocked by recent events in Ottawa, in Sydney, in Paris, in Brussels. If I may say so here in New Zealand, they remind us that nobody, however remote they are from the source of the terrorist action, is exempt or immune from this threat," said Hammond.

Large Muslim countries in the Asia-Pacific region already had foreign fighters present in Iraq and Syria, who could be expected to return "and then we will have to face this challenge in this region as well."

"We have to deal with those who believe they can impose their perverted ideology on the world through force. We have to take them on. We have to defeat them militarily and we have to defeat their arguments by proposing a counter-narrative and that's what we're committed to do as members of the anti-ISIL coalition," he said.

The New Zealand government has sent military analysts to Iraq to see if the country could play a role in training Iraqi troops in the fight against the Islamic State, but Key has insisted New Zealand troops would not see combat. Endi