US, coalition looks to boost propaganda war on Islamic State

His French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, added that a new meeting of the seven ministers who met in Paris may soon follow in London.

The meeting in Paris comprised defense ministers from Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States. Other nations have provided various types of nonmilitary support, such as humanitarian aid.

“It is a keyhole through which one gets a lot of insight, and thereby allows us more effectively to bring the huge weight of coalition military power to bear on the battlefield in an effective way”, he added.

“The campaign is not up to the US alone to accomplish”, Carter said last week.

Special Operations forces have long focused on more than just raids and killing terrorists.

“It’s now time to increase our collective effort”, Drian said.

“Turkey is a long-time friend of ours”, Carter said, but “the reality is” that it has a border that “has been porous to foreign fighters”.

The U.S. military announced earlier this week that it was sending additional advisors to Iraq to assist in the fight against Daesh.

As the Iraqi military prepares to retake Mosul where IS fighters have booby-trapped streets and houses to make the urban warfare as hard as possible, there is going to be a need not just for ground forces to seize territory, but for police that can keep security, Carter said, in what is likely to be a messy aftermath.

Fallon said the group had lost 25 percent of the area it controlled in Iraq and 10 percent in Syria. Carter is in Paris to meet with a handful of key coalition countries battling the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as they map out plans for the coming year’s fight.

While European nations have been heavily involved, the USA would like to see more direct military contributions – both equipment and training – from Arab and Asian countries.

A French defence ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the coalition would discuss ways to broadly intensify the effort.

He’s extended President Obama’s metaphor likening the militant group to a cancer. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said there should be “no free riders” in their attempts to destroy the jihadist militant group. “We take that as a positive indicator that we’re starting to hit them where it hurts”. He said the United Kingdom carries out airstrikes six days per week, plus reconnaissance flights to pinpoint targets. But the vital needs are trainers and surveillance assets, such as drones.

A senior USA defence official acknowledged that many Arab allies have been occupied with the Saudi Arabian-led campaign against Houthi militants in Yemen.

“Our strategic approach is to help local, motivated and capable forces on the ground in every way that we can without taking their place”, he said Wednesday.

Votel indicated he expected other countries to increase their special operations forces, or SOF, contributions. This is not to exclude anyone. Edit No: 3293 “We agreed that we all must do more”.

A meeting of 27 defense ministers of the coalition and Iraq will be held in Brussels in three weeks, Carter said.

The probability of war in the South China Sea is low, but the consequences would be huge, warned Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for Economic and Social Policies of Singapore.