This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Canada will send more military trainers to Iraq to support local troops combatting the Islamic State group, but remains committed to pulling out its fighter jets from the campaign, the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has announced.

In line with a campaign pledge, the newly elected Trudeau has vowed to bring home Canadian warplanes deployed in Iraq and Syria, without setting a specific timeframe.

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“We will continue to do more than our share, including a military engagement, but especially in training rather than airstrikes,” he said on Tuesday.

“I’ve committed repeatedly to my allies that we were going to do more on the training front and that means obviously more than just 69 trainers” currently on the ground in northern Iraq.

“How many that will be, what form that will take, what kind of engagement we’re going to have, those are things that we’re going to work out but I have reassured my allies and Canadians that, yes, we will be doing more,” he told Canadian media travelling with him to an Asia-Pacific summit in Manila

“There is no question that this is not going be a short engagement,” Trudeau added.

Trudeau is expected to meet with president Barack Obama on the sidelines of the two-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit starting on Wednesday.

He said he would tell him that “Canada continues to stand firm in its commitment to the coalition along with 60 other countries.”

Canada last year deployed 69 military trainers to northern Iraq to train Kurdish militia, as well as six CF-18 fighter jets that have conducted 1,121 sorties in Iraq and Syria as of 15 November.

Parliament in March voted to extend the mission one year, but Trudeau has vowed to cut it short.