Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni says the world is still paying the price of a misguided "war on terror" launched by the United States in reaction to the September 11, 2001 attacks on its soil, AFP reports.
In a defense of Italy's decision not to actively participate in the current bombing campaign against the so-called Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, Gentiloni argued Wednesday that defeating terrorism would take more than a generation to achieve and that military action could only play a limited role.
"We are still paying, after 15 years, the consequences of what was supposed to be a lightning war to eliminate the terrorist threat," the minister wrote in a letter to Corriere della Sera.
Gentiloni was responding to a front page editorial in the influential daily which suggested Italy had erred by rebuffing France's call on its allies to join an intensified anti-ISIS bombing campaign after the Paris attacks and by emphasizing non-military efforts to weaken Islamist groups.
"I am not aware of any French request that Italy did not respond to," Gentiloni wrote.