This month marks a notable anniversary; 200 years since the battle of New Orleans. Here
in America we call it a great victory over a mighty United Kingdom, our British friends
call it a technicality. The treaty ending the war was signed weeks before. Either way,
we've long since made up. On this 200 anniversary of a great American victory, the United Kingdom
is one of our greatest friends and strongest allies, and today its a great pleasure to
welcome Prime Minister David Cameron back to the White House.
Now, much of our discussion obviously focused on the continuing threat of terrorism and,
in the wake of the vicious attacks in Paris as well as the news surfacing out of Belgium,
today we continue to stand unequivocally not only with our French friends and allies but
with also all of our partners who are dealing with this scourge. I know David joins me when
I say we will do everything in our power to help France seek the justice that is needed
and that all our countries are working together seamlessly to prevent attacks and defeat these
terrorist networks.
Now, Britain and America both face threats to our National security from people who hate
what our countries stand for and are determined to do us harm. In recent weeks we've seen
appalling attacks in Paris, in Peshawar, in Nigeria. The world is sickened by this terrorism
so we will not be standing on our own in this fight. We know what we're up against and we
know how we will win. We face a poisonous and fanatical ideology that wants to pervert
one of the world's major religions, Islam, and create conflict, terror and death. With
our allies, we will confront it wherever it appears. In Iraq, the UK is the second largest
contributor to the anti-ISIL coalition. RAF aircraft have conducted over 100 strikes,
and will continue to play a leading role. We will deploy additional intelligence and
surveillance assets to help Iraqi forces on the ground and we will ensure they are better
trained and equipped to counter explosive devices. But, most important of all, we must
also fight this poisonous ideology, starting at home. In the UK, we're passing a law so
that every public body must combat extremism and this morning, we've agreed to establish
a joint group to identify what more we can do to counter the rise of domestic violent
extremism and to learn from one another. In Europe, Russia has chosen to tear up the International
rule book and trample of the affairs of a sovereign state. This threatens our stability
and our prosperity. It is important that every country understands that and that no-one in
Europe forgets our history. We cannot walk on by. So we will continue to put pressure
on Russia to resolve this crisis diplomatically and at the same time, we'll continue our efforts
to support Ukraine on the path of reform, including with financial assistance. We also
reaffirmed our obligations as NATO partners to stand by our allies and will be contributing
an additional 1000 troops for exercises in eastern Europe this year. On Iran, we remain
absolutely committed to securing that Iran cannot develop a nuclear weapon. The best
way to achieve that now is to create the space for negotiations to succeed. We should not
impose further sanctions now. That would be counter-productive and could put at risk the
valuable International unity that has been so crucial to our approach. We also have to keep pace with new
threats such as cyber attacks, we've discussed that in the last two days, and we've today agreed
to deepen our cyber security cooperation to better protect ourselves.