Iraqi President Fuad Masum and French President Francois Hollande shake hands as they pose for the media on the steps of the Elysee Palace in Paris yesterday.
Reuters/Paris/Dubai
Iran’s supreme leader said yesterday he had personally rejected an offer from the United States for talks to fight Islamic State, an apparent blow to Washington’s efforts to build a military coalition to fight militants in both Iraq and Syria.
World powers meeting in Paris yesterday gave public backing to military action to fight Islamic State fighters in Iraq. France sent jets on a reconnaissance mission to Iraq, a step towards becoming the first ally to join the US-led air campaign there.
But Iran, the principal ally of Islamic State’s main foes in both Iraq and Syria, was not invited to the Paris meeting. The countries that did attend - while supporting action in Iraq - made no mention at all of Syria, where US diplomats face a far tougher task building an alliance for action.
Washington has been trying to build a coalition to fight Islamic State since last week when President Barack Obama pledged to destroy the militant group on both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian border.
That means plunging into two civil wars in which nearly every country in the Middle East already has a stake. And it also puts Washington on the same side as Tehran, its bitter enemy since the Islamic revolution of 1979.
In a rare direct intervention into diplomacy, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Washington had reached out through the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, requesting a meeting to discuss co-operation against Islamic State.
Khamenei said that some Iranian officials had welcomed the contacts, but he had personally vetoed them.
“I saw no point in co-operating with a country whose hands are dirty and intentions murky,” the Iranian leader said in quotes carried on state news agency Irna. He accused Washington of “lying” by saying it had excluded Iran from its coalition, saying it was Iran that had refused to participate.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington was “not co-operating with Iran”, but declined to be drawn on whether it had reached out through the embassy in Baghdad for talks.
“I am not going to get into a back and forth,” he said. “I don’t think that’s constructive, frankly.”
Islamic State fighters sparked alarm across the Middle East since June when they swept across northern Iraq, seizing cities, slaughtering prisoners, proclaiming a caliphate to rule over all Muslims and ordering non-Sunnis to convert or die.
IS fighters, known for beheading their enemies or captives, raised the stakes for the West by cutting off the heads of two Americans and a Briton in videos posted on the Internet which showed the prisoners bound in orange jumpsuits.
French officials said they had hoped to invite Iran to yesterday’s conference but Arab countries had blocked the move.
“We wanted a consensus among countries over Iran’s attendance, but in the end it was more important to have certain Arab states than Iran,” a French diplomat said.
Calling the decision regrettable, Iraq’s Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said Baghdad had wanted Iran to attend.
Iran has occasionally played down its conflicts with the West since President Hassan Rohani, a relative moderate, was elected last year. Khamenei’s intervention, including his statement that some Iranian officials welcomed the US overture, was a rare public acknowledgment of division but also a reminder that powerful interests in Iran oppose a wider thaw.
At yesterday’s international conference in Paris, the five UN Security Council permanent members, Turkey, European and Arab states and representatives of the EU, Arab League and United Nations all pledged to help Baghdad fight Islamic State.
“All participants underscored the urgent need to remove Daesh from the regions in which it has established itself in Iraq,” said a statement after the talks. Daesh is an Arabic acronym for the group which now calls itself Islamic State.
“To that end, they committed to supporting the new Iraqi Government in its fight against Daesh, by any means necessary, including appropriate military assistance....” it said.
Several Western and Arab officials said no concrete commitments were made and that talks on the different roles of those in the coalition would take place bilaterally and over the next 10 days at the UN General Assembly.
“This conference was like a mass. A big gathering where we listen to each other, but it’s not where miracles happen,” said another French diplomat. “It was a strong political message of support for Iraq and now we prepare to fight.”
Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said French aircraft would begin reconnaissance flights over Iraq. A French official said two Rafale fighters and a refuelling aircraft had set off.
“The throat-slitters of Daesh - that’s what I’m calling them - tell the whole world ‘Either you’re with us or we kill you’. When one is faced with such a group there is no other attitude than to defend yourself,” Fabius said at the end of the talks.
Iraqi President Fuad Masum said he hoped the Paris meeting would bring a “quick response”.
“Islamic State’s doctrine is either you support us or kill us. It has committed massacres and genocidal crimes and ethnic purification,” he told delegates.
Yesterday’s conference was an important vote of confidence for the new Iraqi government formed last week, led by a member of Iraq’s Shia majority, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, and also including minority Sunnis and Kurds in important jobs.
Iraq’s allies hope Abadi will prove a more consensual leader than his predecessor Nuri al-Maliki, a Shia whose policies alienated many Sunnis, and that the new government will win back support from Sunnis who had backed the Islamic State’s revolt.
The broad international goodwill towards Abadi shown at yesterday’s conference means Washington will probably face little diplomatic pushback over plans for air strikes in Iraq.
Syria, however, is a much trickier case. In a three-year civil war, Islamic State has emerged as one of the most powerful Sunni groups battling against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, a member of a Shia-derived sect.
Clashes as Iraq forces ready to attack militants
AFP/Baghdad
Sporadic clashes broke out yesterday Monday near Dhuluiyah as security forces and allied tribesmen prepared for an operation against militants who have repeatedly attacked the Iraqi town, officials said.
Dhuluiyah, north of Baghdad, was previously overrun by militants, but local Sunni tribes and police drove them out, and residents have put up fierce resistance to renewed attacks.
The area would appear to be the target of the next major drive against militants who have overrun large areas of Iraq, after a successful operation to break the siege of the Turkmen Shia town of Amerli farther north.
A police major and Ahmed al-Krayim, head of the Salaheddin provincial council, who was in Dhuluiyah, both reported clashes.
They also said a mortar round apparently containing poison gas hit the town, causing breathing problems but no deaths, accounts confirmed by a doctor at the local hospital.
Dozens of tribal leaders met in a Baghdad hotel yesterday for a conference also attended by former prime minister Nuri al-Maliki and meant to drum up support for more decisive military action against Islamic State militants in Dhuluiyah.
“The coming hours will be critical for Dhuluiyah,” said Sheikh Riyadh Abdallah al-Juburi, a senior Sunni tribal leader from the southern part of Dhuluiyah which has resisted IS from the start.
“If we don’t continue to hold our ground, the consequences would be disastrous... but defeating Daash (IS) in Dhuluiyah would be a turning point for the whole of Iraq,” he told AFP during the conference.
Dhuluiyah was one of the main purveyors of Sunni tribal fighters who helped turn the tide on gains by IS’s previous incarnation in 2005-2007, with backing and funding from the US occupation forces.
Juburi said he had called on the foreign powers providing military assistance to the Iraqi federal and Kurdish forces to support a major operation against Dhuluiyah.
“I have already asked for that and it should materialise soon,” he said, without elaborating.
Krayim said reinforcements have already been sent to the area and efforts are under way to repair a bridge across the Tigris River that was bombed by militants, so more can be brought in.
Resident Abu Abdullah said people have turned to crossing the Tigris by boat to buy food, but even that is unsafe—a mortar round targeted boats on Sunday, wounding many people, and snipers are also a threat.
Militants launched a major attack on Dhuluiyah on September 8 using gunmen and two suicide bombers.
One bomber detonated a vehicle to breach a barrier around a southern neighbourhood while the second struck inside. Eighteen people were killed, but the attack was repulsed.
Russia has role to play: Lavrov
Agencies/Paris/Brussels
Russia yesterday offered its help in the international fight against the Islamic State as global powers step up efforts to help Iraq battle militants.
“We have got a contribution to make to the joint efforts in the specific area of ensuring security in Iraq through consolidating society and mobilising it in a fight with terrorism and extremism,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Paris.
“We will do this in parallel with promoting a broader aim of starting a comprehensive, deep analysis of every aspect of terrorist threats,” Lavrov said in remarks released by his ministry.
He was speaking to journalists on the sidelines of an international conference convened to formulate a common strategy against the Islamic State militants.
Representatives from around 30 countries and international organisations gathered after the Islamic State beheaded a third Western hostage over the weekend and the United States said it was considering air strikes on militants in Syria.
“We are also providing military and other assistance to Syria and other countries in the region which face—maybe to a lesser extent—a serious terrorist threat,” Lavrov added.
“These are our partners in Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen and Jordan.”
*Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he cannot rule out the alliance eventually taking on a command and control role in the fight against Islamic State.
“At this stage I won’t exclude anything,” Rasmussen said in Brussels, referring to Islamic State as “a group of terrorists with whom there is no chance whatsoever to find any political solution”.
Rasmussen said there has been no request yet for Nato involvement. He pointed out, however, that the 2011 military operation in Libya “started as a coalition of the willing, but eventually became a Nato operation”.