Arab League Decides to Confront Islamic State; to Back US
The Arab League Foreign Ministers at a meeting in Cairo agreed Sunday to cooperate with the international, regional as well as national efforts in confronting the threat posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
The head of the Arab league urged its members to confront the Islamic State - as ISIS addresses itself - "militarily and politically". Secretary General of the Arab League, Nabil al-Arabi, said at the session that the group's alarming rise in Iraq has challenged not just the authority of the state, but "its very existence and the existence of other states".
The Arab League's move comes in the wake of the U.S. President Barack Obama preparing to go ahead with his plan to stop the militants.
According to Reuters, the Arab League also backed a U.N. Security Council resolution, which was passed last month, asking its member states to "act to suppress the flow of foreign fighters, financing and other support to Islamist extremist groups in Iraq and Syria," NBC reports.
Support from the 22 countries of the Arab league can be of crucial importance for President Obama's plan of forming a strong coalition against the Islamist group that has not hesitated in carrying out beheadings and mass killings just to spread terror. The NATO forces, in a recent meeting in Estonia, decided to take strong immediate action against the Islamic State - whose growing power has concerned one and all.
Before the meeting, diplomatic sources had stated that the Arab Foreign ministers would be supporting a US aerial campaign against the IS. Egypt's official Mena agency informed that the ministers would most likely agree to coordinate with the United States.
