Spain pressures NATO leaders to agree to a larger involvemen4At a NATO conference in Madrid on Thursday, Spain will push its NATO colleagues to consider expanding the alliance’s role in North Africa and the Sahel, and Spain’s foreign minister said an intervention in Mali should not be ruled out.
According to officials, NATO has little appetite for such moves, but as it begins the largest scaling-up of its defences since the Cold War to the east, members such as Spain and Italy are concerned that dangers on the southern border would be neglected.
After nearly two days of talks overshadowed by Russia’s war in Ukraine, NATO’s 30 leaders will attend a last summit session focused on the south on Thursday morning.
After the alliance’s summit statement highlighted terrorism as one of the ‘hybrid threats’ that hostile states can exploit to undermine its security, Spain’s Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said he would not rule out a NATO involvement in Mali if necessary.
“If it was essential and presented a threat to national security, we would do it,’ he told RNE radio. ‘We don’t rule anything out.’
Western governments are concerned about an increase in violence in Mali, where the country’s ruling military junta, supported by Russian private military contractor Wagner Group, is fighting an Islamist insurgency that has spread to neighbouring African countries in the Sahel area.t in North African and Sahel regions
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