Arab states on Sunday agreed to take the “necessary measures” and were prepared to cooperate internationally to confront Islamic State militants, Arab League Secretary-General Nabil al-Arabi said.
At the start of a foreign ministers’ meeting in Cairo, al-Arabi had called for a political and military confrontation with the jihadists and other militants who he said threatened the existence of Arab states.
He later stopped short of explicitly backing US air strikes in Iraq and Syria targeting the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
“The Arab foreign ministers have agreed to take the necessary measures to confront terrorist groups including” the Islamic State, Arabi said at a news conference.
“International cooperation is included; international cooperation on all fronts,” he said.
The ministers agreed to “take all measures to counter terrorism: political, security and ideological,” he added, without spelling out what these measures would be.
His remarks came as the US expanded air strikes against the militants and sought wider regional backing for its campaign.
Arabi had earlier urged the foreign ministers to take “a clear decision for a comprehensive confrontation, militarily and politically.”
Iraq had welcomed US President Barack Obama’s plan for an international coalition against jihadists as a “strong message of support,” after repeatedly calling for aid against the militants.
Obama outlined the plan at a NATO summit on Friday for a broad coalition to defeat the Islamic State, which led an offensive that overran parts of Iraq in June and also holds significant territory in neighboring Syria.
He said he will make a speech to lay out his “game plan” to deal with and ultimately defeat the Islamic State, but warned he would not wage another ground war in Iraq.
The Islamic State, originally an al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq that expanded in the Syrian conflict, claims its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is the rightful leader, or caliph, of all Muslims.
The group’s astonishing rise in Syria and Iraq caught the government in Baghdad, and much of the region, off guard.
Arabi said the Islamic State posed a threat to the entire region.
“What is happening in Iraq is that the terrorist organization not only threatens a state’s authority, but threatens its very existence and the existence of other states,” he said.
Arab countries have participated in Western-led military campaigns in the past, including the first Gulf War and the aerial campaign against former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi.
The US expanded its month-long air campaign against the militants in Iraq’s Sunni Arab heartland, hitting Islamic State fighters west of Baghdad as Iraq troops launched a ground assault.
Aside from fighting in Iraq, Arab states are concerned that Islamic State is coordinating with domestic extremists and that militants who traveled to join the group might conduct attacks on their return home.
In Egypt, several militants who have carried out attacks on security forces since the army overthrew former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi last year had traveled to fight in Syria.
Egypt’s main militant group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, has not publicly pledged its loyalty to the Islamic State, but has referred to the jihadists as “brothers.”
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the