Iraq's prime minister has accused the international coalition fighting Islamic State (IS) of not doing enough to tackle the group and said important members such as Saudi Arabia are not curbing the flow of foreign fighters to his country.
Western and Middle Eastern countries in the coalition are meeting this week in Paris. Part of their agenda is to persuade the Iraqi government to repair its relationship with Iraq's Sunni minority.
The meeting follows the Iraqi government's biggest military setback in nearly a year. On May 17, IS seized Ramadi from the weakened Iraqi army. The capital of the overwhelmingly Sunni Anbar province is just 55 miles west of Baghdad.
Since then, government troops and Shi'ite militias have been building up positions around the city. Many of Iraq's minority Sunnis dislike hardline Sunni IS but also fear the Shi'ite militias after years of bloody sectarian strife.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, a moderate Shi'ite, can only persuade Sunni tribes to fight IS if he demonstrates he can control the powerful Shi'ite militias whose military muscle he now depends on.
He said he was confident the appeal to the Sunni tribes was "on track" and rejected suggestions Iraq was not doing enough politically.
"To be honest, we need a lot of political work on the part of the coalition countries. We need an explanation why there are so many terrorists from Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, Egypt ... European countries. If it is due to the political situation in Iraq, why are Americans, French and German (fighters) in Iraq?" he said.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article