RAF Joins US & Explores More Ways & to Help Yazidis'
Daily Mail UK, 9 August 2014
Britain is looking at how to get a religious minority group off an Iraqi mountain it has been trapped on by extremist Islamic State (IS) fighters, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said.
He said the first British humanitarian relief including drinking water and tents would be dropped "imminently" by RAF aircraft to members of the Yazidi in the Sinjar mountains in Iraq's north-west.
Thousands of Yazidis have been driven into the barren mountains near the Syrian border and hundreds of women from the minority seized by the hardline Sunni IS militants.
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has chaired a meeting of the Cobra committee to assess the crisis in northern Iraq
Speaking after chairing a meeting of the Government's Cobra committee, Mr Hammond said such airdrops were only a short-term solution.
He said: "We can expect a continuing drumbeat of airdrop operations working in co-ordination with the US and potentially with others as well.
"But more widely we are looking at how to support this group of people and get them off that mountain, how we are going to facilitate their exit from what is a completely unacceptable situation."
The US has begun airstrikes against IS targets engaging Kurdish forces near the key city of Irbil, but Britain has ruled out military action at this stage.
But the Government has committed £8 million towards humanitarian aid for the troubled country.
Mr Hammond said the Government was deeply concerned by the humanitarian crisis and the "extraordinary cruelty" shown by ISIS in areas it has taken control of in the north of Iraq.
The first consignment of UK emergency aid has left RAF Brize Norton for Iraq as the West tries to counter the threat from extremists.
But Mr Hammond said it was for a new Iraqi government to lead the fight against ISIS, formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), which has declared a new caliphate in the area of Iraq it controls.
"We are waiting, all of us are waiting, for a new Iraqi government to be formed which will then have to take the lead in responding to the challenge that ISIS is posing to the integrity of the Iraqi state," Mr Hammond said.
He added: "At the moment our focus is on supporting the humanitarian effort, trying to deal with the growing humanitarian crisis in Iraq and waiting to see as the new government is formed, whether it will be an inclusive government we can get behind and support in its efforts."
He also called on other countries to send aid, which would also send a political message that "the world is horrified" at what is happening.
The UK's £8 million emergency package includes reusable filtration containers, tents, and solar lights which can also recharge mobile phones.
Some £3 million will go to charities and NGOs already on the ground and helping displaced people in northern Iraq, and £2.5 million to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
A further £500,000 ($750,000) will be used to ensure Kurdish and UN systems can co-ordinate properly.
'I Don't Think We are Going to Solve This Problem in Weeks':
Obama Says it Will Take 'Some Time' to End the Conflict in Iraq
President Barack Obama refused to put forward a timetable for a resolution to the conflict in Iraq on Saturday, saying that it was going to 'take some time.'
'I don't think we are going to solve this problem in weeks,' Obama said, noting that it 'is going to be a long-term project.'
The president said among his 'immediate concerns' was making 'sure ISIL is not engaging in the actions that could cripple a country permanently.'
Despite his open ended timetable for untangling the U.S. from Iraq, the president stood by his previous promises that he would not put boots on the ground in the country for any reason other than to protect American personnel stationed there.
'I've been very clear that we're not gonna have us combat troops in Iraq again, and we are going to maintain that because we should have learned a lesson from our long and very costly incursion in Iraq,' he said.
President Barack Obama said today that it would take 'some time' to resolve the conflict in Iraq and admitted that it will be longer than 'weeks'
Obama also said that 'right now' he did not need any additional funding from Congress to carry out military missions in Iraq.
Asked if the U.S.underestimated Islamic militants in Iraq, Obama said: 'There is no doubt that their advance, their movement over the last several months has been more rapid than intelligence estimates.'
The president admitted that policy makers inside and outside of Iraq did not have a 'full appreciation' for the fact that Iraqi forces would not stand their ground in the face of the enemy.
However, Obama expressed irritation with the perception that it was his 'decision' to pull out of Iraq in 2011.
'That entire analysis is bogus and wrong and oftentimes gets peddled around here by folks who are trying to protect' their own policy decisions,' Obama said.
The previous administration, he said, turned over control of the country to the Iraqi people.
And the Iraqi government, 'based on its political considerations' and the fact that the Iraqi people were tired of their country being occupied, opted not to pass laws that would protect American troops.
'That presupposes that I would have overwritten this sovereign government,' if I had told them, ''You don't have a choice," ' he said.
'Which would have kind of run contrary to the argument we were kind of making,' he added.
That said, history had not happened the way it did, and the US still had troops in Iraq, they wouldn't have been able to prevent the current crisis, he said, because the Iraq has not done the things it needed to do to have a cohesive government.
If the the U.S still had combat troops in Iraq, Obama said, the only difference is that 'we'd have a much bigger job, and we'd probably have to go up again in the number of ground troops to make sure those troops weren't vulnerable.'
Immediately after the president spoke he hopped aboard his Marine One helicopter with his family to speed off to their annual summer vacation in Martha's Vineyard.
The first family will remain in the elite Massachusetts town for the next two weeks. President Obama will return to Washington next weekend for several days of meetings and then rejoin his family there for the five final days of their vacation.
The president did not cancel or postpone his vacation even after the Islamic militants overrunning the country took control of one of Iraq's largest dams and ran religious minorities out of the city of Mosul under threat of death.
With no where else to go, an estimated 40,000 followers of the Yadizi religion have been stranded on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq for several days.
Over the last two days the U.S. military has made air drops of food, water and basic medical supplies to the Iraqi refugees hiding away in the mountains and has launched airstrikes on extremists camped outside the nearby city of Erbil.
'We feel confident that we can prevent ISIL form going up a mountain and slaughtering the people there,' Obama said today.
The issue is providing 'safe passage' down the mountain and figuring out where the refugees will live after that, Obama said.
FIRST STRIKE:
Smoke rises over the desert near Arbil, northern Iraq, after US air strike on Islamic State artillery.