Canada frozen out of anti-Daesh coalition talks
Iran Press TV
Tue Jan 19, 2016 7:6PM
Canada has not been invited to a ministerial meeting in the French capital this week to discuss the battle against the Daesh Takfiri terror group.
The meeting, which is planned to be held in Paris on Wednesday, will host defense ministers from the Netherlands, France, Australia, Germany, Italy and the UK.
US Defense Secretary Ash Carter did not mention Ottawa last week in a speech in Kentucky when he announced plans for holding talks with defense ministers from countries that are playing a significant role in the so-called US-led coalition that is allegedly targeting positions of Daesh in Iraq and Syria.
Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan, meanwhile, tried to play down the exclusion on Tuesday as he said the meeting would not be the only gathering over the issue.
The meeting comes as Washington has urged coalition members to contribute more to the anti-Daesh fight in Iraq and Syria after the deadly terrorist attack in Paris in November claimed by Daesh.
This is while Canada's new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised to withdraw the country's six fighter jets from the mission but said Ottawa would increase military training.
Canada's opposition Conservative party has said in reaction to the exclusion that Ottawa "is deliberately being excluded because of this Liberal government's decision to withdraw our CF-18s from the mission against ISIS (Daesh)."
Since September 2014, the US along with some of its allies has been conducting air raids against what are said to be the Daesh terrorists inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate. The air assaults in Syria are an extension of the US-led aerial campaign against purported Daesh positions in Iraq, which started in August 2014.
The US-led strikes have on many occasions targeted infrastructures and left many civilians dead.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said during an interview in March that the US-led military campaign does not aim to "do away" with the terror group.
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