Kuwait backs all efforts against IS – US calls for Syrian, Arab ground troops

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KUWAIT CITY, Dec 3, (Agencies): Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Suleiman Al-Jarallah said that Kuwait welcomes and supports any effort to strengthen the international coalition for countering the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Commenting on the US decision to dispatch 100 commandos to fight ISIL in Iraq and Syria, Al- Jarallah said that Kuwait welcomes any move that helps boost the efficiency of the anti-ISIL coalition.

The remarks were made by Al-Jarallah on the sideline of his partaking in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Embassy’s celebrations of the UAE National Day. Al-Jarallah said that the upcoming Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Supreme Council Summit would be held in a very critical time.

It would tackle several important issues related to accelerating regional developments and security threats, Al-Jarallah told reporters late Wednesday on the sidelines of his participation in the United Arab Emirates Embassy’s celebrations of the UAE National Day.

He added that the leaders would also discuss the progress of the pan-GCC march and proposals to expand economic, social and cultural cooperation and integration among member states On his meeting with the Russia’s ambassador to Kuwait, Al-Jarallah said the meeting was held upon a request from the Russian side and it focused on following up the outcome of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al- Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah’s recent visit to Moscow.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry called Thursday for Syrian and Arab ground troops to take on Islamic State fighters to enable a complete defeat of the organisation. “I think we know it, that without the ability to find some ground forces that are prepared to take on DAESH (IS), this will not be won completely from the air,” Kerry told delegates a gathering of dozens of foreign ministers in Belgrade.

When asked later whether he was referring to Western or Syrian ground forces, he said: “Syrian and Arab, as we have been consistently”. Washington is however due to send 50 US special forces into Syria soon. His comments at the annual ministerial council of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) came after Britain’s parliament voted late on Wednesday to join the US-led bombing campaign over Syria.

The last round of Syria peace talks were held in Vienna last month, bringing together 17 countries including Russia, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The talks set a fixed calendar for a ceasefire followed by a transitional government in six months and elections one year later, but Syrian opposition figures have called this unrealistic. “If we get the political transition in place we empower every nation and every entity to come together, the Syrian army together with the opposition… together with Russia, the United States and others to go and fight (against) DAESH,” Kerry said in Belgrade. “Just imagine how quickly this scourge could be eliminated in a matter of literally months if we were able to secure that kind of political resolution.”

In Brussels on Wednesday, Kerry had urged NATO allies to intensify the fight against the IS group. US President Barack Obama on Thursday said that while the United States is sending more forces to combat Islamic State in Iraq, it is not following the model of its 2003 invasion of the country that locked it in violent conflict there for many years. “We’re not going to do an Iraq-style invasion of Iraq or Syria with battalions that are moving across the desert,” he said in an interview with CBS, using a common acronym for the militant group, ISIL. “But what I’ve been very clear about is that we are going to systematically squeeze and ultimately destroy ISIL and that requires us having a military component to that.”

A new force of special operations troops being deployed by the United States to Iraq will likely number around 100, US Army Colonel Steve Warren said on Wednesday. “It will be … probably around 100, maybe a little bit less,” said Warren, a spokesman for the US-led military campaign against Islamic State. “It’s really going to be a majority support personnel, everything from … aviators to collectors. So actual forces who will do offensive or kinetic operations, it’s a very small number, double digit.” US Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the deployment of the force in congressional testimony on Tuesday.

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, had told Reuters on Tuesday that the total number might be around 200. A cap on the number of US forces authorized to operate in Iraq, currently at 3,550, would be raised by about 100, Warren said. “We expect that … when we combine the actual trigger pullers with all of the various support personnel that are required, the end state is going to be about 100 up from where we are now,” Warren said.

In related news, British bombers made their first strikes on Islamic State in Syria on Thursday, hitting oil fields that Prime Minister David Cameron says are being used to fund attacks on the West. Tornado bombers took off from the Royal Air Force Akrotiri air base in Cyprus just hours after British lawmakers voted 397-223 to support Cameron’s plan for air strikes, a Reuters witness said. They returned to base safely several hours later.

The four aircraft used laser-guided bombs to attack six targets in the Omar oil fields in eastern Syria controlled by the Islamist militant group which British officials call DAESH, using an Arabic acronym that the group rejects. “That strikes a very real blow at the oil and the revenue on which the DAESH terrorists depend,” Defence Secretary Michael Fallon told the BBC. “There are plenty more of these targets throughout eastern, northern Syria which we hope to be striking in the next few days and weeks,” Fallon said. He said Britain was sending eight more warplanes to Cyprus to join the missions. There was no immediate information about casualties from the raids.

The British contribution still forms only a tiny part of US-led “Operation Inherent Resolve”, which has been bombing Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria for more than a year with hundreds of aircraft. Previously, the small British contingent participated in strikes on Iraq but not Syria. But although the British vote adds little additional military capability to the coalition, it has had outsized political and diplomatic significance since last month’s attacks in Paris, as Europe’s other leading military power wrestled with a decision to join France in expanding its military action.

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