Arabs offering strikes on militants, U.S. says

Iraq President Fouad Massoum, right, followed by Iraq Foreign Minister Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, left, arrive with Iraqi officials at Orly airport south of Paris, France, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2014 ahead of a conference with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, French President Francois Hollande and diplomats from around  the world. The conference on Monday aimed at helping Iraq fight off extremists from the Islamist State group, with an added urgency following the release of a video showing the beheading of a British aid worker, the third Western hostage killed in recent weeks by the militants. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)
Iraq President Fouad Massoum, right, followed by Iraq Foreign Minister Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, left, arrive with Iraqi officials at Orly airport south of Paris, France, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2014 ahead of a conference with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, French President Francois Hollande and diplomats from around the world. The conference on Monday aimed at helping Iraq fight off extremists from the Islamist State group, with an added urgency following the release of a video showing the beheading of a British aid worker, the third Western hostage killed in recent weeks by the militants. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

PARIS -- Several Arab countries have offered to carry out airstrikes against militants from the Islamic State, senior State Department officials said Sunday.

The offer was disclosed by U.S. officials traveling with Secretary of State John Kerry, who is approaching the end of a week-long trip that was intended to mobilize international support for the campaign against the group.

"There have been offers both to Centcom and to the Iraqis of Arab countries taking more aggressive kinetic action," said one of the officials, who used the acronym for the U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East.

Kerry, who is in Paris to attend an international conference hosted by France today on providing aid to the new Iraqi government, has already visited Baghdad; Amman, Jordan; Jidda, Saudi Arabia; Ankara, Turkey; and Cairo.

The 25-nation gathering in Paris is intended to coordinate aid to Iraq in the efforts against the Islamist militants. France invited foreign ministers from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, and China -- along with European and Arab nations involved in implementing U.S. President Barack Obama's strategy to degrade and destroy the Islamic State group.

The Paris talks take on increased urgency after a third foreign hostage, British aid worker David Haines, was beheaded.

During Kerry's stop in Jidda on Thursday, 10 Arab countries joined the United States in issuing a communique that endorsed efforts to confront and ultimately "destroy" the Islamic State, including military action to which nations would contribute "as appropriate."

U.S. officials said the communique should be interpreted as meaning that some, but not all, of the 10 Arab countries would play a role in the military effort.

The United States has a broad definition of what it would mean to contribute to the military campaign.

"Providing arms could be contributing to the military campaign," said a second State Department official. "Any sort of training activity would be contributing to the military campaign."

Still, while the United States would clearly have the dominant role in an air campaign to roll back the Islamic State's gains in Iraq, other nations may also participate.

French President Francois Hollande told Iraqi officials that his country would be willing to carry out airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq, senior Iraqi officials said.

"We need aerial support from our allies," Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq said during a joint news conference with Hollande on Friday. "The French president promised me today that France will participate in this effort, hitting the positions of the terrorists in Iraq."

Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia has also said that his country will join the air campaign and is sending as many as eight FA-18 attack planes, as well as an early warning aircraft and a refueling plane.

The Australian aircraft will operate from the United Arab Emirates. Australia is also sending 200 troops, including commandos, to serve as advisers to Iraqi soldiers and the Kurdish peshmerga forces.

Abbott said Australia was responding to a formal request from the United States for specific contributions to the international coalition.

The U.S. State Department officials, who asked not to be identified under the agency's protocol for briefing reporters, did not say which Arab nations had offered to carry out airstrikes.

There are other ways Arab nations could participate in an air campaign against the Islamic State without dropping bombs, such as flying arms to Irbil in the Kurdistan region or Baghdad, conducting reconnaissance flights or providing logistical support and refueling.

The officials said the Arab offers were under discussion.

"I don't want to leave you with the impression that these Arab members haven't offered to do airstrikes, because several of them have," the first State Department official said.

"The Iraqis would have to be a major participant in that decision," the official added. "It has to be well structured and organized."

British Prime Minister David Cameron said after the release of a video showing the beheading of Haines by Islamic State fighters that Britain will support U.S. military efforts against the Islamic State group by using British forces to help with logistics and intelligence gathering, but will not send ground troops.

Haines is the third Westerner beheaded in recent weeks by the Islamic State group, which Cameron described as posing a "massive" threat to the rest of the Middle East.

"They are killing and slaughtering thousands of people -- Christians, Muslims, minorities across Iraq and Syria," Cameron said after an emergency meeting with military and security chiefs.

Cameron said the group is planning attacks against Britain and the rest of Europe and that Britain has to step up its counterterrorism efforts.

Assistance in border regions

Iraqi officials have already offered some thoughts about what the next step should be. In recent weeks, the United States has focused its airstrikes on the defense of Irbil, securing the Mosul Dam and protecting the Haditha Dam.

But al-Abadi has asked the United States to take action on the Syrian side of the Iraqi-Syrian border to deprive the Islamic State of the safe havens in that area. Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish autonomous region, made a similar request in a telephone call with Kerry on Saturday night, State Department officials said.

"The Iraqis have asked for assistance in the border regions, and that's something we're looking at," the first State Department official said.

So far, the U.S. is the only foreign country carrying out airstrikes against the group in Iraq, and Obama has threatened to expand them to militant safe havens in Syria.

But more than 40 nations have committed to military and nonmilitary actions as part of the coalition, according to U.S. officials.

"I can tell you right here and now that we have countries in this region, countries outside of this region in addition to the United States, all of whom are prepared to engage in military assistance, in actual strikes if that is what it requires," Kerry said Sunday on CBS' Face the Nation broadcast.

France has Dassault Aviation SA Rafale jets at a military base in the United Arab Emirates, and Britain has bases in Cyprus and the UAE.

Iraqi officials have long experience working with the U.S. military and had appealed for U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State fighters in Iraq months before the Obama administration decided to conduct them.

For now, the U.S. intends to intensify airstrikes on the militants in coordination with the Iraqi government, a State Department official said. Obama is considering extending the attacks, now limited to Iraq, to Islamic State bases, leaders and supply lines in neighboring Syria.

Meanwhile, the head of the main Western-backed Syrian opposition movement was in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday seeking support for the group's war-battered rebel fighters, which he said will be reorganized.

The Free Syrian Army has been marred by defections and divisions. Its fighters are engaged in a two-front war against Islamic State fighters and Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces.

The White House says it wants to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels -- many of whom will likely be fighters aligned with the Syrian National Coalition -- to fight the Islamic State extremists on the ground in Syria, supported by air power.

Syrian National Coalition leader Hadi Bahra said a plan is in place to revamp the Free Syrian Army and bring the fighters more effectively under the political leadership of his group.

"The plan, which we have put together, is built on reorganizing and restructuring the forces of the Free Syrian Army under the central command and control leadership of the SNC," he said. "This by itself will improve their activities, and it will improve the results they are achieving on the ground."

Bahra made the remarks after meeting with the UAE's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash in Abu Dhabi. The UAE has expressed its willingness to join an international coalition against the Islamic State fighters.

U.S. officials said last week that Saudi Arabia would help train moderate Syrian rebels at Saudi bases.

It remains unclear how the Syrian opposition movement intends to carry out its new plan, but Bahra vowed the group is committed to toppling Assad's regime and expelling foreign militants from Syria.

"The Syrian National Coalition assured ... the UAE that the war that has started against the regime and Islamic State will be ongoing until they fall together no matter what the sacrifice," Bahra said.

Information for this article was contributed by Michael R. Gordon, David D. Kirkpatrick and Merna Thomas of The New York Times; by Gregory Katz, Lori Hinnant, Nicolas Garriga, Sabina Niksic and Geir Moulson of The Associated Press; and by Terry Atlas, Gregory Viscusi, Sangwon Yoon, Andrew Atkinson and David Lerman of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 09/15/2014

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