Biden reassures Iraqi leader of U.S. support

In this Friday, March 27, 2015 file photo released by the official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, commander of Iran's Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, right, greets Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei while attending a religious ceremony in a mosque at his residence in Tehran, Iran.
In this Friday, March 27, 2015 file photo released by the official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, commander of Iran's Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, right, greets Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei while attending a religious ceremony in a mosque at his residence in Tehran, Iran.

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Joe Biden reassured Iraq's government Monday of U.S. support in the fight against the Islamic State, telephoning Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi with thanks for "the enormous sacrifice and bravery of Iraqi forces" one day after Defense Secretary Ashton Carter questioned the Iraqi military commitment.

Biden's call came after harsh criticism from Iraqi and Iranian quarters after Carter questioned Iraqi forces' "will to fight" the surging Islamic State.

A White House statement Monday describing Biden's call said the vice president welcomed an Iraqi decision to mobilize additional troops and "prepare for counter-attack operations." Biden also pledged full U.S. support to "these and other Iraqi efforts to liberate territory from ISIL," the statement said, using another name for the Islamic State.

In reaction to Carter's remarks, which were broadcast Sunday in a CNN interview, a spokesman for Iraq's prime minister suggested the defense secretary had "incorrect information," while Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of the elite Quds forces in Iran's Revolutionary Guard, offered his own critical assessment of U.S. forces.

In an interview with the BBC, al-Abadi vowed Iraqi forces will recapture the city of Ramadi from Islamic State militants within days.

Asked how long it would take to wrest the Anbar provincial capital back from the extremists, al-Abadi said: "I'm talking about days now."

The Iraqi leader added: "It makes my heart bleed because we lost Ramadi. But I can assure you we can bring it back soon."

Saad al-Hadithi, a spokesman for al-Abadi, said Iraq's government was surprised by Carter's comments.

"We should not judge the whole army based on one incident," al-Hadithi said.

Al-Hadithi said the Iraqi government believes the fall of Ramadi was due to mismanagement and poor planning by some senior military commanders in charge. However, he did not elaborate, and no action has been taken against those commanders.

In Iran, the daily newspaper Javan quoted Soleimani as saying the U.S. didn't do anything to stop the extremists' advance on Ramadi.

"Does it mean anything else than being an accomplice in the plot?" he reportedly asked, later saying the U.S. showed "no will" in fighting the Islamic State.

Soleimani said Iran and its allies are the only forces that can deal with the threat. "Today, there is nobody in confrontation with [the Islamic State] except the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as nations who are next to Iran or supported by Iran," he said.

Iran has offered advisers, including Soleimani, to direct Shiite militias fighting against the extremists. Iran has said it does not have combat troops fighting in Iraq, though some Revolutionary Guard members have been killed there.

The exchanges came after the Iraqi loss of Ramadi and other Islamic State gains in recent days. The criticism from both Iraq and Iran began when Carter told CNN's State of the Union that Iraqi forces "vastly outnumbered" the Islamic State but still "showed no will to fight" and fled the militants' advance on Ramadi.

U.S. officials, including Carter, have said Iraqi forces fled the Islamic State advance on Ramadi without fighting back, leaving behind weapons and vehicles for the extremists. Video images of Iraqi forces withdrawing from Ramadi as a much smaller militant force swept through the city rekindled memories of a battlefield debacle last June, when Iraqi troops retreated from the northern city of Mosul and elsewhere. Mosul, a city of more than 1 million, remains an Islamic State stronghold.

Al-Abadi largely rejected Carter's comments. "I am sure he was fed with the wrong information," he said.

The Iraqi prime minister also said pro-government forces have the determination to fight, but the Islamic State's trademark tactic of detonating vehicular suicide bombs has had a demoralizing effect.

"They have the will to fight, but when they are faced with an onslaught by [Islamic State] from nowhere ... with armored trucks packed with explosives, the effect of them is like a small nuclear bomb," al-Abadi told the BBC. "It gives a very bad effect on our forces."

Many militants have been slipping into Iraq from neighboring Syria through a frontier that is largely under Islamic State control, al-Abadi said. "We've asked our international coalition partners to tighten control over the border," he said.

Iraqi troops and allied militias, mostly Shiite, have been massing for a counteroffensive to retake Ramadi, which is about 70 miles west of Baghdad, in Anbar province, Iraq's Sunni heartland.

In recent days, the Iraqi army and allied militias have already retaken some areas and positions outside Ramadi, while mobilizing for a larger offensive.

A senior White House official, speaking ahead of the announcement of Biden's call, said "we know the Iraqi retreat followed an intense wave of suicide bombings. The reference to lack of will was in relation to this specific episode, which followed 18 months of fierce [Iraqi Security Forces] attrition against ISIL in Ramadi, coupled with what the Iraqi government has acknowledged were breakdowns in military command, planning and reinforcement.

"We are encouraged by Iraqi forces mobilizing at the order of Prime Minister al-Abadi and now beginning to push back to the east of Ramadi, in coordination with local Anbari tribes," the official said, speaking on grounds of anonymity because this person wasn't authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Turkey, U.S. agree

Meanwhile, Turkey and the U.S. have agreed in "principle" to provide air protection to Syrian rebels fighting Islamic State militants, once they enter Syrian territory for battle, Turkey's foreign minister said.

The two countries agreed in February to train and equip up to 15,000 Syrians under the $500 million U.S. program designed to add a credible ground force to an air bombing campaign against the militant group.

The program suffered unexplained delays as the U.S. resisted Turkish calls for the force to be also prepared to fight the Syrian regime and the sides tried to reach agreement on whom to train.

The U.S. also has refused a Turkish proposal for enforcing a safe area and a no-fly zone in Syria, prompting questions on how trained rebels would be protected when they entered Syria.

"They have to be supported via air," Mevlut Cavusoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, told the pro-government Daily Sabah newspaper in comments published Monday. "If you do not protect them or provide air support, what is the point?"

Cavusoglu didn't provide further details on the air cover or confirm whether the air support would include the use of armed drones taking off from an air base in southern Turkey.

"These are technical details," Cavusoglu told Daily Sabah during a visit to Seoul, South Korea. "There is a principle agreement on providing air support. How it is going to be provided is in the responsibility of the army."

While resisting Turkish pressure for the rebels to also target Syrian regime forces, U.S. officials have conceded that the recruits will have to defend themselves against all sides.

Cavusoglu said: "While the fight against [the Islamic State] is prioritized, the regime must be also stopped."

The Islamic State has made recent gains in Syria, capturing the desert city of Palmyra, home of Roman-era ruins that are a United Nations World Heritage site. In recent days, Syrian and other media have reported, militants have killed hundreds of civilians and suspected Syrian government collaborators in and around Palmyra.

The Islamic State, which arose from the chaos in Syria, controls much of Iraq and Syria. Both the Iraqi and Syrian governments, aided by international partners, are fighting to oust the group.

This past weekend, Mideast officials gathered in Jordan at an economic summit said they wanted more involvement from the U.S. in the fight against the Islamic State, including weapons deliveries and military action beyond its coalition airstrikes. President Barack Obama has remained leery of involving the U.S. in another ground war in Iraq after withdrawing combat troops at the end of 2011.

So far, the U.S. approach to the conflict has been to conduct airstrikes in Iraq and Syria as part of an international coalition it leads. It also has equipped and trained Iraqi forces and, in Syria, has aided rebel groups seeking to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Information for this article was contributed by Kevin Freking, Sameer N. Yacoub, Nasser Karimi, Bassem Mroue, Sarah el-Deeb and Suzan Fraser of The Associated Press and by Patrick J. McDonnell of the Los Angeles Times.

A Section on 05/26/2015

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