U.S. tells allies to do more to pressure Islamic State group
WASHINGTON — The United States on Wednesday urged coalition partners to step up efforts to defeat Islamic State militants as top officials from 68 nations gathered in Washington to assess the fight to retake Iraq’s second largest city and advance on the extremists’ self-declared Syrian capital.
“I recognize there are many pressing challenges in the Middle East, but defeating ISIS is the United States’ number one goal in the region,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the coalition’s first ministerial gathering since President Donald Trump took office.
“As we’ve said before, when everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. We must continue to keep our focus on the most urgent matter at hand,” Mr. Tillerson said.
Mr. Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis were hosting Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Ababi and foreign ministers from the coalition partners at the State Department to explore new ideas to expand the fight against IS in the Iraqi city of Mosul and ready the operation to push the militants from Raqqa, Syria.
They also are preparing for the group’s defeat by lining up humanitarian and reconstruction assistance.
“We are at the stage of completely decimating Daesh,” Mr. al-Abadi said, using the Arabic acronym for IS.
The meeting occurred amid the latest manifestation of the accelerating, U.S.guided military campaign. The Pentagon said it provided an airlift for Syrian fighters taking part in an offensive underway in Tabqa, west of Raqqa. A spokesman said U.S. military advisers are on the ground in the Tabqa area to help coordinate the operation, which aims to block IS fighters from western approaches to Raqqa. Mr. Tillerson alluded to the intensified campaign, but said the Trump administration was still refining its strategy.
“A more defined course of action in Syria is still coming together,” he said. “But I can say that the United States will increase our pressure on ISIS and al-Qaida and will work to establish interim zones of stability, through cease-fires, to allow refugees to return home.”
The reference to “zones of stability” appeared to stop short of “safe zones,” which the U.S. military has been extremely reluctant to commit to enforcing in Syria, even as Mr. Trump and others have raised the idea at various times.
Nothing Mr. Tillerson outlined departed significantly from the Obama administration’s approach, which focused on using local forces to retake territory along with efforts to disrupt IS recruitment and financing, and the blueprint of the multilateral effort seemed unchanged. The strategy is complicated in Syria, where a partnership with Kurdish forces has prompted difficult discussions with Turkey, which sees the militants as a national security threat.