US accelerates efforts to destroy IS

(Baonghean.vn) - The United States is looking for fresh military, counterterrorism and diplomatic ideas to defeat the Islamic State (IS) group more quickly, Secretary of State John Kerry said on November 23, acknowledging the difficulty in eliminating extremists who have exploited four years of chaos in the Middle East to become a global threat. He said greater military cooperation with Russia could happen under the right conditions.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan speak to the media after visiting the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on November 23. Photo: AP.

Kerry spoke between meetings with senior Arab officials in the United Arab Emirates, and as Brussels tightened security due to terrorist threats. The Obama administration faces pressure at home and abroad to intensify the fight against IS after the November 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Obama will meet French President Francois Hollande in Washington today (November 24).

Speaking to reporters, Mr. Kerry said: "The key issue is to destroy IS quickly in Syria and Iraq. I want us to move faster, and that is also what the President expects."

The top US diplomat said Mr Obama was asking the entire US government to come up with new concepts to accelerate the fight. He said some steps had been taken before the Paris attacks, such as the decision to deploy some US special forces to Syria and ongoing efforts to reach a ceasefire between the Syrian government and rebel groups.

However, Kerry did not offer any specific additions to the strategy following the events in Paris.

He also did not mention countries that would allow large-scale ground troops to be deployed in Syria, as some presidential candidates have suggested. And he rejected the idea of ​​a no-fly zone in Syria, proposed last week by former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, which Mr. Kerry said was “not a new idea.”

Kerry did not rule out greater cooperation with Russia, which Mr. Hollande is expected to ask Mr. Obama to pursue. Obama and other U.S. officials say Russia must first limit its airstrikes to IS and other extremist groups, and not target Western-backed moderate forces.

In another development, the US military said it destroyed 283 IS vehicles used to transport oil from production fields in eastern Syria to smuggling points in an increase in attacks on one of IS's most important sources of revenue.

The attack, involving four A-10 attack aircraft and two AC-130 gunships, was carried out on November 21 near Deir el-Zour and al-Hasakah but was not announced until November 23. A similar attack on November 15 destroyed 116 oil tankers as part of a coordinated campaign to disrupt the group’s oil revenue.

Kerry said IS “is losing territory, towns, manpower, oil revenues”. However, they are receiving support from other terrorist groups around the world, making the task of destroying them more urgent.

Thu Giang

(According to AP)