He also stressed that the priority will be to only deploy military personnel who have particularly expressed their willingness to participate and are part of the recruitment pool for crisis management operations. The establishment of a separate recruitment pool would necessitate a considerable increase in the defense budget, which Finland can ill afford, admitted Niinistö.
"We can avoid such situations by fostering our foreign relations and security situation, and by investing in international co-operation. That is our objective, but if we cannot avoid those situations, we would always be able to take action," he said.
At the beginning of December, President Sauli Niinistö promised the US to help in the fight against Daesh. However, as Finnish legislation did not allow direct military assistance to third countries, the Finnish authorities had to settle for appropriate amendments. Earlier, Finnish military only participated in peacekeeping operations. At present, however, about 50 of Finnish military specialists train fighters of the Kurdish Peshmerga force the city of Erbil in Iraq.
