Kerry promises 'intense and sustained' support for Iraq as Obama steps back from military action
- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry promised 'intense and sustained' U.S. support for Iraq on Monday
- He was in Iraq meeting Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to deliver the Obama administration's message that Iraqis must come together in order to save their country
- President Barack Obama is so far continuing to stand firm on his decision not to deploy combat troops to Iraq
- The country's problems can't be solved by military might alone, he said, in interview that aired on CNN, CBS and MSNBC on Monday morning
- 'There's no amount of American fire power that's gonna be able to hold the country together,' Obama told CNN
- A new poll shows that more Americans than not believe the U.S. is under no obligation to give Iraq military assistance
Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday promised ‘intense and sustained’ U.S. support for Iraq, but said the divided country would only survive if its leaders took urgent steps to bring it together.
Hours before Kerry arrived in Baghdad, Sunni tribes who have joined a militant takeover of northern Iraq seized the only legal crossing point with Jordan, security sources said, leaving troops with no presence along the entire western frontier which includes some of the Middle East's most important trade routes.
U.S. President Barack Obama has offered up to 300 American advisers to Iraq but held off granting a request by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite Muslim-led government for air strikes to counter the two-week advance by Sunni militants.
Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday promised 'intense and sustained' U.S. support for Iraq, but said the divided country would only survive if its leaders took urgent steps to bring it together
Oceans apart: Secretary of State John Kerry and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met face to face in Baghdad on Monday. The two government officials didn't appear to be on very friendly terms at a photo-op, but Kerry said the 100 minute meeting went well
Officials have meanwhile called for Iraqis to form an inclusive government. The insurgency has been fuelled largely by a sense of materialization and persecution among Iraq's Sunnis.
‘The support will be intense and sustained and if Iraq's leaders take the necessary steps to bring the country together, it will be effective,’ Kerry told reporters in Baghdad.
He said Maliki had ‘on multiple occasions affirmed his commitment to July 1’ as the date to start the formation of a new government bringing in more Sunnis and Kurds to share power, a move Washington is keen to see.
Iraqi and Jordanian security sources said tribal leaders were negotiating to hand the Turabil desert border post to Sunni Islamists from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) who took two main crossings with Syria in recent days and have pushed Iraqi government forces back toward Baghdad.
Kerry, center left, flew to Baghdad this morning to meet with Maliki, right, and Iraq's other leaders to personally urge the Shiite-led government to give more power to political opponents before a Sunni insurgency seizes more control across the country and sweeps away hopes for lasting peace
Iraq state television said late on Monday that the army had recaptured both the crossing with Jordan and the al-Waleed crossing with Syria.
Ethnic Kurdish forces control a third border post with Syria in the north, leaving government troops with no presence along Iraq's 800-km western border.
For the insurgents, capturing the frontier is a dramatic step towards the goal of erasing the modern border altogether and building a caliphate across swaths of Syria and Iraq.
Kerry said: ‘Iraq faces an existential threat and Iraq's leaders have to beat that threat with the incredible urgency that it demands. The very future of Iraq depends on choices that will be made in the next days and weeks.’
Washington, which withdrew its troops from Iraq in 2011 after an occupation that followed the 2003 invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, has been struggling to help Maliki's administration contain a Sunni insurgency led by ISIL, an al Qaeda offshoot which seized northern cities this month.
The U.S. can't go in and occupy every country in the Middle East facing turmoil, president Obama said in a series of interviews that aired on Monday morning
¿Unless we are prepared to stay indefinitely in all these various countries, something that we can¿t afford, and it would involve over time accusations that we were occupying these countries,¿ Obama told Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski, ¿at some stage, they¿re gonna have to take responsibility for working together'
Washington is worried Maliki and fellow Shi'ites who have won U.S.-backed elections have worsened the insurgency by alienating moderate Sunnis who once fought al Qaeda but have now joined the ISIL revolt.
While Washington has been careful not to say publicly it wants Maliki to step aside, Iraqi officials say such a message was delivered behind the scenes.
There was little small talk when Kerry met Maliki, the two men seated in chairs in a room with other officials.
The meeting lasted one hour and 40 minutes, after which Kerry was escorted to his car by Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari. As Kerry got in, he said: 'That was good.'
The face to face meeting followed the broadcast of an interview with President Obama in which had reiterated that the United States cannot solve Iraq's problems with military force.
Kerry, center, greets the crew as he boards a plane at Jordan's Queen Alia International Airport in Amman this morning
A general view from a helicopter carrying Secretary of State John Kerry, shows Baghdad, Iraq as of this morning. Islamic extremists have still been unable to get close to the country's capitol city despite destroying neighboring towns
Only Iraqis can resolve the violent conflict tearing apart in their country, Obama said, and in order to do accomplish this, they must find a way to ignore their sectarian differences for the common good of their homeland.
'If they can't, there's not gonna be a military solution to this problem, Obama told CNN's Kate Boulduan.
'There's no amount of American fire power that's gonna be able to hold the country together, and I've made that clear to [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki] and all the other leadership inside of Iraq.'
The U.S. neither has the resources nor the responsibility to be the world police in the Middle East, President Barack Obama emphasized.
‘Unless we are prepared to stay indefinitely in all these various countries, something that we can’t afford, and it would involve over time accusations that we were occupying these countries,’ Obama told Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski,‘at some stage, they’re gonna have to take responsibility for working together.’
Iraq is the third stop on Kerry's trip to the Middle East. The Secretary of State, center, his staff and bodyguards are pictured here boarding a plane in Jordan this morning
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, second right, greets Kerry, left, upon his arrival to Baghdad
Kerry's meeting in Baghdad today comes after an announcement by President Barack Obama on Thursday that the U.S. would send up to 300 military advisers to Iraq but no combat troops
America's military cannot run around the world playing 'whack-a-mole' with extremist groups, the president has repeatedly said throughout the last several days.
‘Keep in mind that our goal in Afghanistan was to decapitate Al Qaeda, which had carried out 9/11. That has been accomplished. Now Afghanistan is a sovereign country that is gonna have to deal with its own security,’
Last month the president announced that he would significantly draw down troops in Afghanistan by the end of the year. The president has made clear that he would not put boots back on the ground in Iraq.
On Thursday Obama announced that the U.S. would deploy up to 300 military advisers to help train, advise and support the Iraqi army but made clear that the forces would not engage in combat with the Islamic radicals violently attempting to conquer the country.
A CBS News/New York Times poll released on Monday found that Americans are divided about how they want the president to handle the situation.
Half of Americans believe that U.S. does not have a responsibility to provide military assistance to the ailing country, while 42 percent said the U.S. was obligated to intervene.
Likewise, 50 percent poll-takers said they believe the ongoing situation in Iraq will not increase the threat of terrorism in the United States, compared to the 44 percent who thought it would.
Kerry greets U.S. Marines as he arrives at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.