Obama, top US allies to discuss challenges straining Europe

Aerzen, Germany: Taking advantage of his German visit, President Barack Obama and top US allies are gathering to discuss issues that he says are putting European unity "under strain."

Monday's meeting in Hannover, Germany, comes on the final day of Obama's two-day visit to push for the conclusion of negotiations on a US-Europe trade deal. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi were joining Obama.

In a speech on US-European relations, to be delivered before the meeting, Obama planned to announce the deployment of 250 US military personnel, mostly Army Green Berets, to Syria to assist local forces fighting the Islamic State group. The deployment would bring to 300 the number of US forces battling extremists in the war-torn country.

The move will significantly increase the US presence in Syria and comes a week after Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the deployment of more than 200 troops to Iraq, where the Islamic State also controls territory, along with the first shipment of Apache helicopters.

About 50 US special operations forces have been operating in Syria.

The high-level talks between the US and its major European allies come a month after IS militants claimed responsibility for attacks that killed more than 30 people in Brussels, just across the German border. Obama's sessions with leaders during a week of stops in Saudi Arabia, London and Germany focused on the IS threat.

Topping the agenda Monday are efforts to counter IS. Other topics include refugee migration, Syria, Russia, Ukraine and Libya. The leaders are also expected to discuss additional steps by NATO allies to address challenges on Europe's eastern and southern borders, along with efforts to spur agreement on the trade deal.

Obama recently said that failure to plan for the fallout in Libya after the toppling of leader Moammar Gadhafi was his biggest mistake as president.

Libya since has descended into chaos and become a base for IS. The leaders are likely to discuss how they can work with a newly installed, U.N.-backed unity government to keep IS extremists from further tightening their grip on the North African country.

Obama has said he has no plans to send in ground troops, calling it an unnecessary step that would send the wrong signal.

He discussed assistance to Libya during separate meetings with Cameron and Merkel in recent days. At a news conference Sunday alongside Merkel, Obama said having the unity government "requires us to do everything we can to encourage it."

Merkel echoed his sentiment. "That's why we're trying to cooperate internationally in order to bring about this goal, and not have different goals that we pursue," she said.

Germany has an interest because of Libya's key role as a transit point for migrants trying to reach Europe. Merkel recently helped forge a deal between the European Union and Turkey to stop the influx of migrants in the eastern Mediterranean, raising concerns that those trying to reach Europe might again switch to crossing through Libya.

"We'd end up paying the bill, too, if we didn't help this (unity) government gain recognition and sovereignty in its country," Juergen Hardt, a German lawmaker and the government's coordinator for trans-Atlantic cooperation, told The Associated Press in an interview. Germany took in the overwhelming bulk of migrants to Europe last year.

Obama declined Friday to describe European unity as "in crisis, but I would say it is under strain," he said, blaming the aftermath of the financial meltdown and the more recent migration issue that exposed fault lines among European countries about how to manage it.