BAKU
Germany will send weapons and “most likely” also provide military training to Kurdish groups in northern Iraq, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Thursday.
Steinmeier, who is on an official visit to Azerbaijan, said Germany had been sending humanitarian aid to the Kurdish groups, but noticed that it was not enough.
“We will send weapons to fight” the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or the ISIL, he said at a joint press conference with Azerbaijan Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov.
“We are also discussing military training for the armed Kurdish groups,” he added.
The German minister said Germany had sent a research commission to Erbil in northern Iraq and would decide about training of the fighters upon its return.
He said Germany hoped for positive results in the upcoming meeting of Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents on October 27 in Paris to discuss the disputed territory, Nagorno-Karabakh, between the two countries.
Mammadyarov said there was a need to increase the trade volume between the two countries from the current levels of $3 billion.
Steinmeier also met with Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev.
Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994, but it has been periodically disrupted by cross-border incidents.
www.aa.com.tr/en
