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Germany to decide on military aid for Iraq on Sunday - minister

PRAGUE (Reuters) - The German government will decide on Sunday what specific military aid it will send to Kurdish forces in Iraq to help them fight Islamic State militants in the north of the country, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Wednesday.

"We should be helping with certain supplies, according to our capabilities, so they can fight and prevent ISIS from taking over the whole region and creating a caliphate," he told a news conference in Prague. "The German government has not reached a decision yet today but I believe that a decision should be made on Sunday on concretely what should be supplied," said the German minister.

Germany's decision last week to help the Kurds signalled a break with a post-war principle of not sending arms to conflict zones. Chancellor Angela Merkel said what she described as "genocide" in northern Iraq justified exceptional measures.

(Reporting by Jan Lopatka and Robert Muller; Writing by Stephen Brown)

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