Kerry: anti-ISIL coalition taking shape, but not with Iran

US secretary of state visits Turkey in latest stop to rope in allies against extremist militants.

ANKARA // The US secretary of state John Kerry said he was confident the United States would form a coalition to fight ISIL, as France pledged more military support to help Iraq fight the extremists.

“I’m comfortable that this will be a broad-based coalition with Arab nations, European nations, the United States, others,” Mr Kerry said in Ankara after meeting Turkish leaders yesterday.

However, it would not be appropriate for Iran to be involved in the efforts, he said.

He said France had publicly made clear its willingness to take action in Iraq and to use force but said it was too soon to say what role the various individual nations would play.

Mr Kerry’s visit was part of a regional tour to build up an anti-ISIL coalition and came as the CIA said the group may have more than 31,000 fighters – three times as many as previously thought.

The US intelligence agency said the new total reflected “an increase in members because of stronger recruitment since June following battlefield successes and the declaration of a caliphate, greater battlefield activity, and additional intelligence”.

ISIL overran large areas of northern Iraq in an offensive launched in June and later declared the captured territory, along with adjoining areas under its control in Syria, as an Islamic caliphate.

The French president Francois Hollande travelled to Baghdad yesterday in the highest-profile visit to Iraq since the ISIL offensive.

“I came here to Baghdad to state France’s availability in providing even more military assistance to Iraq,” Mr Hollande said at a news conference with the new Iraqi prime minister Haider Al Abadi, whose cabinet was approved by parliament this week but with key security posts unfilled.

Mr Hollande touched down in Baghad hours after Mr Kerry secured commitments from 10 Arab states, including the UAE, to help stamp out ISIL and other terrorist groups.

The United States, which pulled its troops out of Iraq in 2011, began a campaign of airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq last month.

France, which is to host an international conference on Iraq on Monday, has said it is prepared to take part in airstrikes against the militants in Iraq “if necessary”.

Earlier, at a press conference with Iraq’s president Fouad Massoum, Mr Hollande said ISIL was waging a war on “all people who do not share their vision or ideas”.

He sid the aim of the Paris conference “is to coordinate the aid, the support [and] the actions to work for the unity of Iraq and against this terrorist group” .

Mr Hollande later travelled to Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region for meetings with officials, and also visited a church sheltering displaced Iraqi Christians.

President Barack Obama vowed this week to expand operations, including to Syria, and the Pentagon said combat aircraft would soon start flying out of a base in the country’s north.

Reuters and Agence France-Presse