US trying to speed up efforts to defeat Islamic State: Kerry – France strikes IS in Iraq

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Standing without shoes as a sign of respect in the mosque, US Secretary of State John Kerry (left), and United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, speak to the media after touring the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi on Nov 23. (AFP)
Standing without shoes as a sign of respect in the mosque, US Secretary of State John Kerry (left), and United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, speak to the media after touring the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi on Nov 23. (AFP)

ABU DHABI, UAE, Nov 23, (Agencies): The United States is seeking new military, counterterrorism and diplomatic ideas to destroy the Islamic State group faster, Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday, acknowledging the difficulty in eliminating extremists who’ve exploited four years of chaos in the Middle East to become a global threat. He said greater military cooperation with Russia was possible under the right circumstances. Kerry spoke between meetings with senior Arab officials in the United Arab Emirates, and as the Belgian capital of Brussels was in virtual lockdown over terror threats a continent away.

President Barack Obama’s administration faces pressure at home and abroad to step up the fight against the Islamic State after its Nov 13 attack in Paris killed 130 people. Obama meets French President Francois Hollande in Washington on Tuesday. “The key is to destroy DAESH rapidly in Syria and in Iraq,” Kerry told reporters, using an alternative term for the Islamic State. “I’d like to see us go faster,” he said. “The president would like to see us go faster.” The chief American diplomat said Obama was asking everyone in the US government for new concepts to speed up the fight. Some steps were in motion before the Paris attack, he said, such as the decision to deploy some US special forces to Syria and ongoing efforts toward a cease-fire between Syria’s government and rebel groups. But Kerry didn’t outline any specific post-Paris additions to the strategy. He made no mention of any country authorizing a large-scale deployment of boots on the ground to Syria, as some Republican presidential candidates have suggested. And he dismissed the notion of a no-fly zone in Syria, proposed just last week by his predecessor as secretary of state, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.

He said it was “not a new idea.” Kerry didn’t rule out greater cooperation with Russia, which Hollande is expected to ask Obama about. Obama and other US official say Russia must first limit airstrikes to the Islamic State and other extremist groups, and not Western-backed, moderate forces. If rebels see new cooperation with Russia as designed to keep Syrian President Bashar Assad in power, “that complicates issues, and then you will have greater support going to bad actors.”

Meanwhile, France launched air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq on Monday in the first sorties from the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier, newly deployed in the eastern Mediterranean. “We carried out strikes in Ramadi and Mosul in support of ground forces that were pushing against troops of (the Islamic State group),” said army chief of staff General Pierre de Villiers, aboard the carrier. He said planes from the Charles de Gaulle would launch strikes against IS targets in Syria, including command and recruitment centres as well as oil facilities, in “a matter of hours or days”. Rafale jets catapulted from the carrier’s flight deck on Monday morning, an AFP reporter saw. The strikes came 10 days after the deadly jihadist attacks in Paris, claimed by IS, that left 130 dead. French President Francois Hollande said earlier in Paris: “We will intensify our strikes, choosing targets that will do the most damage possible to this army of terrorists.” The Charles De Gaulle has 26 fighter jets, more than trebling France’s strike capacity in the US-led mission against IS. France already has six Mirage and six Rafale jets stationed in the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.

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