French Carrier Joins Fight as U.S. Reviews Anti-Jihadist Effort
A French aircraft carrier launched operations in the Gulf against the Islamic State group Monday as the new Pentagon chief summoned top generals and diplomats to Kuwait to review war efforts.
U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter vowed the jihadists would suffer a "lasting defeat" as he convened the extraordinary meeting of more than two dozen senior military officers, ambassadors and intelligence officials at the sprawling U.S. Army base of Camp Arifjan.
Washington forged a coalition of Western and Arab nations to confront IS after the Sunni Muslim extremist group seized control of large parts of Syria and Iraq and declared an Islamic "caliphate" last year.
The coalition has since carried out more than 2,000 air strikes against the jihadists and France boosted its participation on Monday with the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier launching raids from the Gulf.
"This threat, jihadist terrorism, wants to reach our citizens, our interests, our values. France's response will be total firmness," Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said as he launched operations seven weeks after extremist attacks killed 17 people in Paris.
Four Rafale fighter jets took off in the morning from the carrier as it sailed about 200 kilometres (120 miles) off the coast north of Bahrain in the direction of Iraq.
Carrying 12 Rafale and nine Super Etendard fighters, the carrier will spend eight weeks in the Gulf working alongside the USS Carl Vinson, significantly increasing French air capabilities in the region.
- Curbing IS expansion -
France, along with Australia, is a main contributor to the 32-member coalition effort aside from the United States, which is carrying out the bulk of strikes.
France and other Western nations are conducting operations over Iraq and several Arab nations are taking part in strikes over Syria.
The campaign aims to support forces in Iraq and Syria, including rebel fighters and Kurdish forces, battling IS on the ground and to hit infrastructure seized by the jihadist group such as oil facilities.
"Air support... for our Iraqi and Kurdish allies has helped curb the territorial expansion of (IS) and stabilise the front lines. This was our first objective and it has been attained," Le Drian said.
While excluding the deployment of ground combat troops, coalition countries have also sent trainers to work with Iraqi forces.
In Kuwait only days after taking office, Carter told US troops at Camp Arifjan that the coalition was "pressing" IS "very ably from Kuwait and elsewhere".
"And we will deliver lasting defeat, make no doubt," he said.
Carter said he had called the meeting of commanders and officials "to sit around one table and talk about all of the dimensions of this campaign".
The discussion would look not just at the fight in Iraq and Syria, but the wider regional struggle against IS, he said.
- 'Threat to the region' -
"ISIL is not just a threat to Iraq and Syria. It's a larger threat to the region," said Carter, using an alternative acronym for the group.
The group's influence has spread as it cements its hold on territory in Syria and Iraq, with jihadist groups in several countries pledging allegiance to IS.
The IS branch in Libya claimed responsibility for suicide bombings last week that officials said left 40 dead as well as the mass beheadings of 21 Coptic Christians, most of them Egyptian.
The meeting of top brass and diplomats in Kuwait was not intended to produce a new strategy but to allow Carter to better understand the challenge posed by the jihadists and the range of efforts aimed at defeating them, said a senior U.S. defense official.
The coalition campaign has dealt significant damage to IS, with a monitoring group saying Monday that 1,465 members of IS had been killed in the first five months of air strikes in Syria.
Another 73 fighters from Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate Al-Nusra Front had been killed, along with 62 civilians, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
But the jihadists still hold swathes of territory and U.S. military officials have said they want Iraqi forces to launch an offensive to retake the strategic northern city of Mosul from IS in April or May.
Source: Agence France Presse
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