WASHINGTON, D.C. (Press Release) — The following is a Joint Statement by Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on the ISIL meeting held Friday, Sept. 5, at Celtic Manor in Wales, United Kingdom.
This morning (Friday, September 5) we had a meeting with some of our key allies and partners on the serious threat that ISIL poses to Iraq, the entire region, and the international community.
We and the Ministers agreed here today that there is no time to waste in building a broad international coalition to degrade and, ultimately, to destroy the threat posed by ISIL.
The formation of a new and inclusive government in Iraq will be a critical step in this effort. We are hopeful that this process can be completed over the coming days, and we discussed in detail how NATO allies can extend immediate support to a new government in its efforts to unify the country against ISIL.
To be effective, an international coalition to defeat ISIL must coordinate across multiple lines of effort. These include:
- Military support to our Iraqi partners;
- Stopping the flow of foreign fighters;
- Countering ISIL’s financing and funding;
- Addressing humanitarian crises; and
- De-legitimizing ISIL’s ideology.
We discussed each of these lines of effort today, and how to build on the contributions that many NATO allies and partners are already making in Iraq.
We agreed to engage in an immediate conversation with a new Iraqi government about accelerating these efforts, including the potential for additional training and equipping of the Iraqi Security Forces at the federal, regional, and provincial level.
We also discussed further cooperation to address the humanitarian crisis in Iraq, and noted the shared effort by the military forces of the United States, France, Australia, and the UK to deliver humanitarian supplies to the citizens of Amerli in northern Iraq. This town had been surrounded for two months by ISIL, but today is receiving humanitarian aid and supplies led by a UN team on the ground. Such a common effort will be essential as we move forward.
Across the other lines of effort, we and the ministers noted the strong Chapter 7 UN Security Council Resolution enacted last month that calls on all member states to take decisive action to stop the flow of foreign fighters, counter ISIL’s financing, and combat its incitement. We agreed today that NATO allies in particular should work in concert towards these goals.
Specifically, we will form a multinational task force to share more information about the flow of foreign fighters into Syria and from Syria into Iraq. These foreign fighters represent an acute threat to our NATO allies. We also agreed to work in concert to stifle ISIL’s sources of revenue, including any trade in petroleum products, and hold accountable those who violate international prohibitions on such trade.
As President Obama has said, the effort to degrade and destroy the threat posed by ISIL will take time and persistence. It will also require a unified approach at the international, regional, and local level – combining military, law enforcement, intelligence, economic, and diplomatic tools. Our NATO allies and partners today have confirmed their readiness to be a full part of this coordinated approach, and over the coming days, we will continue the discussion with our partners in the region, who have an important role to play across these lines of effort.
This effort will also be a focus of the UN General Assembly later this month as we work to establish a truly global coalition. Acting together, with clear objectives and common purpose, we will degrade and destroy ISIL capabilities – and ensure that it can no longer threaten Iraq, the region, and the world.
Additionally, a partial transcript of remarks by Secretary Kerry prior to the meeting was also issued by the State Department:
Everybody here understands what ISIL is and the challenge that it represents. I would say to all of you, including those of you – the defense ministers who are now with us, but we had a very provocative conversation last night among the foreign ministers regarding some of the overall challenges we all face, the number of failed states and the challenges of disorder in so many countries. In many ways, I believe ISIL presents us with an opportunity. And it’s an opportunity to prove that we have the ability to come together, that our capacities for defense are not so frozen in an old model that we can’t’ respond to something like ISIL, that we can’t pull ourselves together and effect the coalition of clearly the willing and the capable to be able to deal with ISIL.
Contrary to what you sort of heard in the politics of our country, the President is totally committed; there is a strategy that is clear, becoming more clear by the day. And it really relies on a holistic approach to ISIL. That is to say that we need to do kinetic, we need to attack them in ways that prevent them from taking over territory, that bolster the Iraqi security forces, others in the region who are prepared to take them on, without committing troops of our own, obviously. I think that’s a redline for everybody here, no boots on the ground. Nevertheless, there are many ways in which we can train, advise, assist, and equip. There are kinetic operations we can run in direct support of Iraqi security forces.
And we’ve proven the model in the last weeks – breaking the siege on Sinjar Mountain, breaking the siege of Amirli, breaking of momentum that was moving towards Erbil, and in effect picking up enough intel to understand that the minute we hit them, these guys are not 10 feet tall. They’re not as disciplined as everybody thinks. They’re not as organized as everybody thinks. And we have the technology, we have the know-how. What we need is obviously the willpower to make certain that we are steady and stay at this.
There is no contain policy for ISIL. They’re an ambitious, avowed genocidal, territorial-grabbing, Caliphate-desiring, quasi state within a regular army. And leaving them in some capacity intact anywhere would leave a cancer in place that will ultimately come back to haunt us. So there is no issue in our minds about our determination to build this coalition, go after this. I’ll give you a quick take at what we are looking for and what we’re going to do.
When we say holistic, we mean every aspect of this group, and I think this could become conceivably a model that can help us with Boko Haram, could help us with Shabaab, with other groups if we can do this successfully. And NATO needs to think of it that way as we consider sort of our role in this new world we’re living in. We need to go after their financing mechanisms and sources, and we need to elicit broad-based support within the world of (inaudible) as well as in the world of normal banking and cover entities, businesses and so forth. Which means our law enforcement and intelligence agencies are going to need to coordinate and work together that have a clear part of an agenda within this framework.
We need a major humanitarian component that needs to be coordinated with the economic component, which will be real, to help Iraq get on its feet. We need a foreign fighter component. President Obama is going to be leading a National Security Council meeting in New York in the course of UNGA (United Nations General Assembly). We want – hope everybody will take part in that and help us lay down a critical agenda with respect to how we deal, all of us, with foreign fighters, which is a challenge to every country here, which is partly why we are all here.
In addition, we need an all-military aspect. Some people will not be comfortable doing kinetic. We understand that. Or some people don’t have the capacity to do kinetic. But everybody can do something. People can contribute either ammunition or weapons or technical know-how or intel capacity. People can contribute advisors. We’ve just put another 350 people on the ground in an effort to build up our advisor capacity. We’re building up our ISR platform and intel capacity. We also are building up the kinetic capacity, and that will be a clear part of this.
We very much hope that people will be as declarative as some of our friends around the table have been in order to be clear about what they’re willing to commit, because we must be able to have a plan together by the time we come to UNGA, we need to have this coalesce. We need a clarity to the strategy, and a clarity to what everybody is going to undertake.
So we’re convinced that in the days ahead we have the ability to destroy ISIL. It may take a year, it may take two years, it may take three years. But we’re determined it has to happen. There are obviously implications about Syria in this, and we can talk about that if we want in the course of the morning…
Preceding provided by the U.S. State Department