Conference of chiefs of the Defence Staff of the coalition held in Madrid./ Photo: www.emad.mde.es
The Diplomat. 02/12/2016
The building of the Air Force’s Headquarters is hosting, today, a preparatory meeting for the countries the most involved in the international coalition against the terrorist group Daesh, facing the next ministerial summit of London, which will be held halfway through December, according to information provided to The Diplomat by diplomatic sources.
The meeting is for secretaries general for defence policy, the equivalent to numbers three in the ministries, and more than twenty representatives of allied countries are expected to attend it. The Spanish delegation will be led by Admiral Juan Francisco Martínez, who has just been promoted to Segenpol within the Ministry of Defence by order of the Minister María Dolores de Cospedal. The Government of Mariano Rajoy will approve, in the coming weeks, an increase of 100 forces in the contingent assigned to Iraq. At the moment, it has 300 military deployed there.
For the North American part, the presence of Elissa Slotkin, deputy secretary of Defence for International Security Affairs, is expected in Madrid. She was the person the most likely to replace Ashton Carter leading the Pentagon if Hillary Clinton had won the US presidential election.
Slotkin attended the Security Conference of Berlin this week, where she participated in the panel titled ‘Terrorism in Europe: how to consolidate the fight against it’. She will preside over these periodic political-military talks along with members of the anti-Daesh coalition and, during her stay in Madrid, she will meet civil servants and counterparties of the Spanish Ministry of Defence.
This meeting in the Spanish capital is the second one hosted by Madrid since the international coalition against the Islamic State was formed. The seventh conference of Chiefs of the Defence Staff took place on 26 October 2015.
