President Barack Obama said key Nato allies stood ready to join the US in military action to defeat Islamic State (IS, also known as Isis) militants in Iraq as he vowed to ‘take out’ the leaders of a movement he said was a major threat to the West.
Obama said Washington would hunt down and dismantle the organisation, which has seized swathes of Iraq and Syria, in the same way it had tackled al-Qaeda since the September 11 attacks on the US and was doing to al-Shabaab in Somalia.
“Key Ntao allies stand ready to confront this terrorist threat through military, intelligence and law enforcement as well as diplomatic efforts,” Obama said after ministers of 10 nations met on the sidelines of a Nato summit in Wales to form what Washington called a “core coalition”.
Ministers from Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Turkey, Italy, Poland, Denmark and non-Nato Australia attended the talks with the US Secretaries of State and Defence, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel.
“Already allies have joined us in Iraq where we have stopped Isil’s advances, we have equipped our Iraqi partners and helped them go on offence,” Obama told a news conference.
The US hoped a new Iraqi government would be formed next week and was confident it would have a coalition for the sustained action required to destroy the militants.
French President François Hollande confirmed Paris was willing to join US air strikes if requested by a new Baghdad government as part of a comprehensive international strategy to confront IS. He also raised the possibility of hot pursuit operations in Syria or assisting other rebels fighting IS there.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, who failed to win parliamentary backing for military action in Syria last year, was more cautious about participating in armed action, saying: “We are not at that stage yet.”
The British public is deeply wary of foreign military intervention after London joined Washington in the 2003 invasion of Iraq based on false information about weapons of mass destruction. France, which opposed that operation, is more open to overseas action.
You initially push them back, you systematically degrade their capabilities
Obama drew criticism last week for saying he had not yet developed a strategy for confronting the Islamic State in Syria, which has provoked public outrage in the West with the gruesome beheading two US journalists.
The US stressed the need for a comprehensive approach in the talks on Friday and acknowledged that action against IS in Iraq would have implications in Syria as well.
“We are going to degrade and ultimately defeat Isil, the same way that we have gone after al-Qaeda,” Obama said in some of his toughest comments since Washington began air strikes last month to halt the Islamists’ advance in northern Iraq.
“You initially push them back, you systematically degrade their capabilities, you narrow their scope of action, you slowly shrink the space, the territory that they may control, you take out their leadership, and over time they are not able to conduct the same kinds of terrorist attacks as they once could.”
In an attempt to counter the threat of US and European militants returning from the region to attack the West, Nato announced plans for allies to share more information on westerners fighting for the militants.
A man with an English accent was filmed beheading the US journalists and Britain raised its terrorism alert last week to its second-highest level over the threat posed by IS, meaning it assessed a strike was ‘highly likely’.
European officials said Cameron and Hollande, the leaders of Europe’s main military powers, told Obama in private meetings that Washington had to do more than simply conduct air strikes on IS targets in Iraq and needed an overall strategy.
“It can’t be just ‘let’s go and bomb a few targets and see what happens’,” said one Western defence official familiar with the talks among allied leaders.
A British official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “There is a growing sense that this is going to take more than we are doing... but it needs to be a measured, cautious approach.”