• pub­lished: 20 Jun 2014
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Pres­i­dent Barack Obama has said he is send­ing up to 300 mil­i­tary ad­vis­ers to help the Iraqi gov­ern­ment in its fight against Is­lam­ic ex­trem­ists as a bat­tle over Iraq's biggest re­fin­ery con­tin­ues to rage. Speak­ing at the White House last night, Mr Obama said he was pre­pared to take "tar­get­ed" mil­i­tary ac­tion but stressed that US troops would not re­turn to com­bat in Iraq. He said ad­di­tion­al equip­ment and up to 300 ad­di­tion­al mil­i­tary ad­vis­ers would be pro­vid­ed to help bat­tle the Is­lam­ic ex­trem­ist group ISIS (Is­lam­ic State of Iraq and the Lev­ant), which has seized large swathes of the coun­try. The con­tin­gent will be made up of spe­cial forces and will staff joint op­er­a­tions cen­tres for in­tel­li­gence shar­ing and plan­ning, of­fi­cials said. "Amer­i­can forces will not be re­turn­ing to com­bat in Iraq but we will help Iraqis as they take the fight to ter­ror­ists who threat­en the Iraqi peo­ple, the re­gion and Amer­i­can in­ter­ests as well," Mr Obama said. The pres­i­dent also said he was send­ing Sec­re­tary of State John Kerry to the Mid­dle East and Eu­rope at the week­end for talks with US al­lies and part­ners on ways to sta­bilise the re­gion. A US of­fi­cial added Mr Kerry was "ex­pect­ed to go Iraq soon" to meet Iraqi of­fi­cials, but did not spec­i­fy a date. Mr Obama stressed Iraqi Prime Min­is­ter Nouri al Ma­li­ki need­ed to take ur­gent steps to heal Iraq's sec­tar­i­an rift, but stopped short of call­ing for him to go, say­ing: "It's not our job to choose Iraq's lead­ers." He added: "Above all, Iraqi lead­ers must rise above their dif­fer­ences and come to­geth­er around a po­lit­i­cal plan for Iraq's fu­ture." Lead­ing US law­mak­ers have joined calls for Mr al Ma­li­ki to quit as a con­di­tion of US help in driv­ing back the Is­lam­ic ex­trem­ists. Sunni trib­al chief Sheik Ali Hatem al Suleiman, the emir of the Sunni Du­laim tribe from Anbar province, said Mr Obama could no longer rely on Mr al Ma­li­ki to solve the ris­ing in­sur­gen­cy. He said: "I think that most of Pres­i­dent Obama's speech, but not all of it, was shal­low and didn't ad­dress the heart of the mat­ter. "It talked about par­tic­i­pa­tion, it talked about a na­tion­al gov­ern­ment, but you can't come to Iraq with a speech that doesn't ad­dress the truth of the prob­lem. "And the real prob­lem in Iraq is al Ma­li­ki him­self.? I don't think Obama's speech ad­dressed the re­al­i­ty of today's Iraq. "You can't rely on him. The man has be­come paral­ysed." Mr al Suleiman also crit­i­cised Mr Obama's de­ci­sion to send 300 mil­i­tary ad­vis­ers to Iraq. "Three hun­dred ad­vi­sors just when you with­draw these 300 ad­vi­sors, Iraq will lose its bal­ance for one rea­son?" 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