WASHINGTON: With militant attacks proliferating around the world, the United States has reassembled its coalition partners for meetings Wednesday and Thursday to review a two-year-old war that has so far failed to eliminate the Islamic State group.
The militant group may have lost ground in Iraq and Syria, but in recent weeks it has claimed horrific attacks in Nice, Istanbul, Baghdad and Dhaka that have left hundreds dead and injured.
The attacks are "going to be a primary focus, obviously, of the discussions," Brett McGurk, President Barack Obama's special envoy to the anti-IS coalition, acknowledged.
For two days, US Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter will meet with about 40 of their counterparts in Washington, including France's Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.
Echoing French Prime Minister Manuel Valls' warning of more attacks ahead and and more "innocents killed," McGurk also cautioned: "Nobody can say these attacks are going to stop.
"Unfortunately, I think we are going to see more of these," he said.
McGurk emphasized that the coalition, which has conducted 14,000 air strikes in two years, is "succeeding on the ground." But he added, "We have a lot of work to do on (militant) networks."
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