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| U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron, right, speak before taking their seats at the start of a NATO-Afghanistan round table meeting during a NATO summit at the Celtic Manor Resort in Newport, Wales on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014. In a two-day summit leaders will discuss, among other issues, the situation in Ukraine and Afghanistan. |
NEWPORT, Wales
(AP) -- President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David
Cameron pressed fellow NATO leaders Thursday to confront the "brutal and
poisonous" Islamic State militant group that is wreaking havoc in Iraq
and Syria - and urged regional partners like Jordan and Turkey to join
the effort as well.
As leaders of the Western
alliance gathered for a two-day summit, Obama and Cameron worked to
begin forming a coalition of nations that could combat the extremists
through military power, diplomatic pressure and economic penalties.
"Those
who want to adopt an isolationist approach misunderstand the nature of
security in the 21st century," they wrote in a joint editorial published
as the meetings began. "Developments in other parts of the world,
particularly in Iraq and Syria, threaten our security at home."
While
some NATO leaders talked tough about the threat posed by the Islamic
State group, the alliance made no specific pledges of action. NATO
Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he believed the broader
international community "has an obligation to stop the Islamic State
from advancing further" and would seriously consider requests for
assistance, particularly from the Iraqi government.
The
Islamic State group moved up the list of international priorities as
the militants pressed through Iraq with lighting speed earlier this
year. The group, which seeks to create a caliphate, or Islamist
nation-state, in the Mideast, is considered even more merciless toward
its enemies than the al-Qaida terror network, and intelligence officials
across the world warn that with hundreds of Westerners fighting for
them, it may soon seek to seed its violence beyond its declared borders.
The
U.S. began launching airstrikes against militant targets in Iraq last
month, with Britain joining American forces in humanitarian airdrops to
besieged minority populations. The militants' killing of two American
journalists inside Syria has raised discussion of targeting the group
there as well.
White House officials said they
did not expect NATO to commit to a military mission against the group
during the summit. Still, they raised the prospect that the end of
NATO's combat mission in Afghanistan - an effort that has consumed the
alliance for more than a decade - could allow member states to focus
their attention elsewhere.
"What you see the
alliance doing at this summit is looking at more than one direction at a
time," said Douglas Lute, the U.S. ambassador to NATO.
Indeed,
the threat posed by the Islamic State overshadowed some of the NATO
summit's official agenda, which was intended to focus on celebrating the
Afghan drawdown of troops and constructing a rapid response force on
the alliance's eastern flank that could serve as a deterrent to Russian
aggression. Obama and European leaders met with Ukrainian President
Petro Poroshenko in a show of solidarity with his embattled nation.
Beyond
direct military action, the White House said it was also seeking
commitments from allies to send weapons, ammunition and other assistance
to Western-backed Syrian rebels and to Iraqi forces.
Germany
moved in that direction Thursday, with the government announcing that
it had sent a first planeload of military equipment to the Kurds in
Iraq's north, including helmets, protective vests, field glasses and
mine-searching devices. The German government also said it had decided
to send assault rifles, ammunition, anti-tank weapons and armored
vehicles to the Kurdish forces, but it hadn't yet set a date for the
arms deliveries.
In between summit sessions on
Afghanistan and Ukraine, Obama and Cameron also sought support from
non-NATO nations that partner with the alliance. The president and prime
minister held separate meetings with Jordan's King Abdullah II
Thursday, and both plan to meet Friday with Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan.
Obama has said repeatedly that
efforts against the Islamic State would be successful only if the U.S.
had support from neighbors of Iraq and Syria.
Secretary
of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who are both
with Obama in Wales, plan to travel to the Middle East next week to
rally more support from regional partners.
The
U.S. and Britain have been particularly concerned about the prospect
that Westerners who have traveled to Syria to join the militants could
return to their home countries and launch attacks. Cameron proposed new
laws this week that would give police the power to seize the passports
of Britons suspected of fighting alongside the extremists.
A British citizen is believed to have carried out the beheadings of the American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.
Cameron
on Thursday said he hadn't ruled out joining the U.S. in airstrikes,
but he added that the priority was to support the forces already
fighting the militants on the ground.
"We need
to show real resolve and determination; we need to use every power and
everything in our armory with our allies - with those on the ground - to
make sure we do everything we can to squeeze this dreadful organization
out of existence," Cameron told the British network ITV.
