North Atlantic Treaty Organisation secretary general pledges to help partners fight so-called Islamic State

The president has chose to cut short his European trip to return to the USA and will visit Dallas next week.

In the south, allies will increase support for European Union naval operations in the Mediterranean, an effort intended “to stop arms traffickers and go after criminals that are exploiting desperate migrants”, Obama said. He said the “empathy and understanding” that Americans have shown in responding to the events of the past few days, including Dallas police officers even as they came under attack, had given him hope.

Obama said the Dallas shooter who does not represent black Americans, any more than a white man accused of killing blacks at a church in Charleston, S.C., represented whites.

Fresh protests were planned in at least half a dozen cities to demand justice for two African-Americans whose fatal shooting by police triggered the Dallas rampage of an angry radical bent on revenge. “Those of us who are not African American will never fully understand the experience of being black in America”, he said.

The White House says President Barack Obama will travel to Dallas on Tuesday and deliver remarks at an interfaith memorial service.

The stark imbalance in strengthening NATO’s flanks [in the East] against the background of unprecedented levels [of terror threat] coming from the South [shows] the apparent isolation of the block’s policy from real need for protection and security of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member states’ citizens, ” the spokeswoman said.

“We can’t just ignore that and pretend that’s somehow political or the president is pushing his policy agenda”, Obama said.

But the divisive issue of gun control could not be separated from the tension between police and local citizens, he said.

On the gun issue, he said the polarization in the country pitted “a very intense minority” against the “majority of Americans who actually think we could be doing better when it comes to gun safety”.

Obama said on Saturday he hoped his legacy on the issue of race would be one of urging Americans to listen to each other and understand the country’s hard relationship with race.

While Brexit had “created uncertainty” about European integration, the president said fears that it could destabilise the relationship between Europe and the United States were exaggerated. “To recognize that, you know, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and discrimination didn’t suddenly vanish with the passage of the civil rights act or voting rights act or the election of Barack Obama”. “And somebody else maybe sits under the shade of the tree that we planted”.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister David Cameron reassured his peers that Britain was committed to the alliance and announced a parliamentary vote on July 18 on revamping Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent to back that up. Officials said he stressed the importance of finding a solution that could stabilize markets quickly.

US President Barack Obama on Saturday tried to unify a fractured nation, insisting the shock shootings in Dallas and simmering racial tensions would not derail a common sense of objective. He has said some of the rhetoric emanating from Trump has harmed the United States’ reputation overseas.

Further south, Romania and the USA are now looking to shift attention to beefing up defenses in the Black Sea region. And though Stoltenberg said Russian authorities will be briefed on this plan, as well as other decisions that were made at the summit, Zakharova states Moscow will seek a thorough explanation at the upcoming Russia-NATO Council.