BARWANA: US President Barack Obama has vowed to outline a long-awaited strategy against Islamic State militants on Wednesday, after Washington expanded its month-long air campaign to Sunni Arab heartland.
The new strikes deepen Washington's involvement in the conflict and are a significant escalation for Obama, who made his political career opposing the war in Iraq and pulled out US troops in 2011.
Iraqi forces sought to capitalise on the strikes, which have largely been limited to the north since they began on August 8, attacking militants in the area and retaking the town of Barwana.
The operation and the expanded US strikes come at a critical time, with Iraq's parliament set to meet on Monday to vote on a new government after a lengthy and contentious process to select a premier-designate and potential cabinet members.
Obama, who has drawn flak for saying he did not have a strategy to combat IS, announced he will make a speech on Wednesday to lay out his "game plan" to deal with the militants.
"I'm preparing the country to make sure that we deal with a threat from" IS, Obama said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press".
He said he would not announce the return of American ground troops to Iraq and would focus instead on a "counter-terrorism campaign".
"We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities. We're going to shrink the territory that they control. And ultimately we're going to defeat them," Obama said.
Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi, meanwhile, said the bloc's 22 members had agreed to confront IS.
"The Arab foreign ministers have agreed to take the necessary measures to confront terrorist groups including" IS, he told reporters in Cairo, without explicitly supporting US calls for a coalition to back its air campaign.
American warplanes bombed fighters from the IS militants group on Sunday around the strategic Haditha dam on the Euphrates River in an area that the militants have repeatedly tried to capture from government troops and their militia allies.
Comments
Comments are closed.