Speaking after a meeting with his
national security team, Obama said he was prepared to take ‘targeted’
military action later if deemed necessary, thus delaying but still
keeping open the prospect of airstrikes to fend off a militant
insurgency. But he insisted that US troops would not return to combat in
Iraq.
Obama also delivered a stern message to Prime Minister
Nuri al-Maliki on the need to take urgent steps to heal Iraq's sectarian
rift, something US officials say the Shi'ite leader has failed to do
and which an al Qaeda splinter group leading the Sunni revolt has
exploited.
"We do not have the ability to simply solve this
problem by sending in tens of thousands of troops and committing the
kinds of blood and treasure that has already been expended in Iraq,"
Obama said.
"Ultimately, this is something that is going to have to be solved by the Iraqis,” Obama added.
Obama,
who withdrew US troops from Iraq at the end of 2011, said the United
States would increase support for Iraq's beleaguered security forces.
But he stopped short of acceding to Baghdad's request for the immediate
use of US air power against Islamist insurgents who have overrun
northern Iraq.
The contingent of up to 300 military advisers will
be made up of special forces and will staff joint operations centers
for intelligence sharing and planning, US officials said.
Leading
US lawmakers have called for Maliki to step down, and Obama aides have
also made clear their frustration with him. Some US officials believe
there is a need for new Iraqi leadership but are mindful that Washington
may not have enough clout to influence the situation, a former senior
administration official said.
While Obama did not join calls for
Maliki to go, saying ‘it's not our job to choose Iraq's leaders’, he
avoided any expression of confidence in the embattled Iraqi prime
minister when asked by a reporter whether he would do so.
Warning
that Iraq's fate ‘hangs in the balance’, Obama said, "Only leaders with
an inclusive agenda are going to be able to truly bring the Iraqi
people together."
US President also said he was sending Secretary
of State John Kerry to Europe and the Middle East starting this
weekend. “I hope this would stabilize the region,” Obama said.
A US official, while requesting for anonymity, said: "Kerry is expected to go Iraq soon.”
Obama's
decision to deploy military advisers and deepen US re-enagagement in
Iraq came after days of arduous deliberations by a President who won the
White House in 2008 on a pledge to disentangle United States from the
long, unpopular war there.
He said that recent days had reminded
Americans of the ‘deep scars’ from its Iraq experience, which started
with the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and saw US
troops occupy the country for nine years.
REFINERY BECOMES BATTLEGROUND
Even as Obama
announced his most significant response to the Iraqi crisis, the
sprawling Baiji refinery, 200 km (130 miles) north of the capital near
Tikrit, was transformed into a battlefield.
Troops loyal to the
Shi'ite-led government held off insurgents from the Islamic State of
Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, and its allies who had stormed the
perimeter a day earlier, threatening national energy supplies.
A
government spokesman said at one point on Thursday that Iraqi forces
were in ‘complete control’. But a witness in Baiji said fighting was
continuing. Two Iraqi helicopters tried to land in the refinery but were
unable to because of insurgent gunfire, and most of the refinery
remained under rebel control.
A day after the government publicly
appealed for US air power, Obama's decision to hold off for now on such
strikes underscored skepticism in Washington over whether they would be
effective, given the risk of civilian deaths that could further enrage
Iraq's once-dominant Sunni minority.
"We will be prepared to take
targeted and precise military action if we conclude the situation on
the ground requires it," Obama said.
But he insisted that any U.S. military response would not be in support of one Iraqi sect over another.
"I think Prime Minister Modi has got off to a splendid start on both the domestic and foreign policy fronts," Ashley J Tellis, senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said.
