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EU urged to join US in arming Kurds against Islamic State
[ARABNEWS] As the United States confirmed on Monday that it has begun urgently shipping arms and ammunition to the Iraqi Kurdish forces battling an advance by Death Eater Islamic State (IS) krazed killers, La Belle France called on the European Union...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... to do the same. "It is crucial that the European Union mobilizes from today to respond to this appeal (by Kurds) for help," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in a letter to EU foreign affairs supremo Catherine Ashton. Fabius, who has just returned from a trip to Iraq where he met Iraqi Kurdish president Massud Barzani, explained that the latter had stressed "the urgent need for weapons and ammunition that would allow them to confront and beat the terrorist group Islamic State." La Belle France and Britannia have pledged support for a US-led operation helping Iraqi civilians — many of them from the Yazidi minority — who are fleeing a deadly advance by IS krazed killers. While all three Western countries are providing emergency aid for the besieged civilians, the United States has also been conducting air strikes on IS positions. On Monday, a US State Department spokeswoman said Washington has also started sending weapons to Kurdish fighters. "We're working with the government of Iraq to increasingly and very quickly get urgently needed arms to the Kurds," Marie Harf told CNN. "This includes the Iraqis providing their own weapons from their own stocks, and we're working to do the same thing from our stocks of weapons that we have." Harf said the effort had been underway since last week, but did not say which US agency was leading the effort or how many and what type of weapons had been sent. The United States has a consulate and other facilities in Arbil, capital of Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region, and last week President Barack Obama I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go... announced air strikes to protect the city from the IS advance. Efforts to support Kurdish peshmerga forces could complicated the United States' ties to the Iraqi government in Baghdad, which is also fighting the Islamic State but has tense relations with Arbil. But Harf insisted that, in the current crisis, the two are working together. "We have seen an unprecedented level of cooperation between the Iraqi forces and the Kurdish forces. We hadn't seen that in the past. They're helping each other out," Harf said. "So any way we can get the very urgently needed arms to the Kurds we are actively working on," she said. "We'll work with the government of Iraq to do that, but we believe again there is such an urgent situation that we need to do this." Fabius reiterated his call for "all the politicians in Iraq to hold talks to find a quick political solution that is acceptable to all parts of the country." Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini also called earlier on Monday for a special EU meeting to discuss "Iraq, Gazoo and Libya, three crises which concern Europe directly." "We're not talking about military intervention but providing support, even of a military sort, to the Kurdish government," Mogherini said. Posted by: Fred 2014-08-12 |
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