Barack Obama says more US forces to ‘squeeze’ ISIS, but Iraq refuses

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov greets US secretary of state John Kerry as he arrives for their bilateral meet on the sidelines of the annual Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) ministerial council meeting in Belgrade, Serbia, on Thursday. — AFP

President Barack Obama said his decision to send more US special forces to combat ISIS in Iraq is not an indication that the United States is headed for another invasion like the one in 2003 that locked it in a long, violent conflict.

Mr Obama has said his strategy to fight the militant group in Iraq and Syria does not include US ground combat troops, but this week, the Pentagon announced it would send a new force of special operations troops.

“When I said no boots on the ground, I think the American people understood generally that we’re not going to do an Iraq-style invasion of Iraq or Syria with battalions that are moving across the desert,” he said in an interview with CBS that aired on Thursday. “But what I’ve been very clear about is that we are going to systematically squeeze and ultimately destroy ISIL and that requires us having a military component to that,” Mr Obama added, using a common acronym for the militants.

Meanwhile, the US secretary of state John Kerry said on Thursday that Syrian and Arab ground forces must be found to take on ISIS, warning the militant group would not be defeated by airstrikes alone.

“I think we know that without the ability to find some ground forces that are prepared to take on Daesh, this will not be won completely from the air,” Mr Kerry said at a meeting in Belgrade of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Daesh is an Arabic name for the jihadist group commonly known as ISIS. Asked later if he meant Western ground forces, Mr Kerry said: “(I’m) talking about Syrian and Arab, as we have been consistently.”

In a policy reversal, the United States on October 30 said it would deploy up to 50 US special forces to Syria to coordinate on the ground with US-backed rebels.

Mr Kerry met his Russi-an counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, on the sidelines of the OSCE meeting, with Washington and Moscow at odds over the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad more than four years into a war that has killed over 2,50,000 people.

The West says that Mr Assad must go, but Russia launched its own airstrikes on September 30 in support of his government, saying it was going after ISIS. Western officials say Russian jets have hit mainly other anti-Assad rebels.

Mr Kerry said that a “political transition” in Syria would pave the way for a united front against ISIS — “the Syrian Army together with the opposition ... together with Russia, the United States and others to go and fight Daesh.” “Just imagine how quickly this scourge could be eliminated, in a matter of literally months, if we were able to secure that kind of political resolution,” he said.

In Brussels on Wednesday, Mr Kerry had urged Nato allies to intensify the fight against the ISIS group.

The last round of Syria peace talks were held in Vienna in November, bringing together 17 countries including Russia, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The talks set a fixed calendar for a ceasefire followed by a transitional government in six months and elections one year later, but Syrian Opposition figures have called this unrealistic.

Meanwhile, Iraq has said that any deployment of foreign troops on its soil cannot happen without approval of its government.

The Iraqi Prime Minister’s comments came in response to the earlier announcement by Ashton Carter, US defence secretary, that the US will deploy “specialised” troops to Iraq to help fight ISIS. “We do not need foreign ground combat forces on Iraqi land,” Haider al-Abbadi said in a statement.