U.S. Plans Coalition Meeting on Fight Against ISIS

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/world/middleeast/coalition-against-islamic-state.html

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PARIS — The United States will convene a meeting next month of defense ministers from 27 countries participating in the fight against the Islamic State to discuss how each member of the coalition could contribute more to defeating the extremist group, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter announced on Wednesday.

“Every nation must come prepared to further contributions to the fight,” Mr. Carter said at a news conference in Paris with the French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian. “And I will not hesitate to engage and challenge current and prospective members of the coalition as we go forward.”

The meeting, to take place in Brussels in about three weeks, will include representatives of allies from Europe and the Middle East. The coalition fighting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has made significant progress, Mr. Carter said. But the coalition now “must seize to hasten ISIL’s lasting defeat.”

In addition to discussing the military campaign against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria, the meeting in Brussels will focus on ways that countries can help with reconstruction of cities that were held by the Islamic State, and on countering the group’s propaganda.

The countries invited to the meeting “have different capabilities, different things they can bring, and in some cases things that they can bring to the fight they are better suited to do than either France or the United States is,” Mr. Carter said after he met Wednesday with the defense ministers of Australia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Britain, countries that have largely led the efforts to defeat the group.

Those six nations are also expected to join the meeting in Brussels next month, as are some Arab countries, including Iraq and Jordan. No Arab countries participated in Wednesday’s meeting.