Obama: No ‘complete strategy’ to help Iraqis yet

The United States still does not have a “complete strategy” to train Iraqi defence forces battling Islamic State (ISIS) fighters who’ve seized control of swaths of the country, President Barack Obama said yesterday.

After a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider Al-Abadi, on the side-lines of the G7 conference in Germany, Obama said that more progress must be made in order to stop the flow of foreign fighters into Syria and Iraq.

He added that all of the countries in the coalition are willing to make more effort to train Iraqi forces if it will help the situation.

The US president also stated in a press conference: “We want to get more Iraqi security forces trained, fresh, well-equipped and focused. And President Abadi wants the same thing. So we’re reviewing a range of plans for how we might do that.”

“We don’t yet have a complete strategy because it requires commitments on the part of the Iraqis, as well, about how recruitment takes place; how that training takes place. The details of that are not yet worked out.”