“This is the parent tumor of ISIL and we need to defeat it there”, Mr. Carter said.
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“We’re prepared to do a great deal because we have the finest fighting force the world has ever seen”.
U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Turkey “can do more” in the fight against the Islamic State group, particularly by tightening its border to stop the flow of resources and foreign fighters.
As the Iraqi military prepares to retake Mosul where IS fighters have booby-trapped streets and houses to make the urban warfare as hard as possible, there is going to be a need not just for ground forces to seize territory, but for police that can keep security, Carter said, in what is likely to be a messy aftermath. “I’m confident we will, but I want to accelerate that process”.
US Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday said the US-led coalition bombing Islamic State strongholds in Syria and Iraq will reach their goal of “seriously denting” the group by the end of 2016.
French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian sounded an upbeat tone about the campaign, saying Islamic State was in retreat.
He said that a “de-escalation” of tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia was necessary.
The new arrangement “enables the United States to more actively target ISIL in Afghanistan”, the official said, using an acronym for the group that controls parts of Iraq and Syria and has established outposts from North Africa to Central Asia. It is not yet clear whether it has begun carrying out operations, but it is expected to conduct raids, collect intelligence and carry out other operations against Islamic State leaders. He then said USA and French special forces work well together.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the private conversation publicly.
Though the USA military presence in Iraq has been steadily growing over the past year-and-a-half this marks the first time an express acknowledgment of ground troops has been made by a senior official. “And we’ll continue to fight them until their complete annihilation”, Lavrov said.
Speaking Thursday at École Militaire, a military war college in Paris, Carter said IS uses the Internet “to give encouragement or even instruction to people who have already been radicalized, or radicalizing some of these poor lost souls who sit in front of a screen and fantasize about a life as a jihadi”.
“We’re certainly open to that”, Carter told reporters traveling with him to Paris on Tuesday.
Le Drian, asked whether France had deployed the special forces, said, “There is a tradition in France that I will respect, neither the minister or the joint chiefs of staff, nor anyone will comment on the special forces and their operations”.
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This pledge comes as the Iraqi military prepares to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, from IS fighters.
