WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (NNN-AGENCIES) — US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged members of the coalition fighting the Daesh group to take militant detainees back to their countries and step up their funding to help restore infrastructure in Iraq and Syria, parts of which were severely damaged by conflict.
“Coalition members must take back the thousands of foreign terrorist fighters in custody, and impose accountability for the atrocities they have perpetrated,” Pompeo said at the opening of a meeting of foreign ministers from the global coalition to defeat Daesh.
The Daesh has lost almost all of its territory in Iraq and Syria. Former leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a US raid last month, but the militant group remains a security threat in Syria and beyond.
Some 10,000 Daesh detainees and tens of thousands of family members remain in camps and prisons in northeastern Syria guarded by the Syrian Kurdish allies of the United States.
Washington is pushing European countries to take their citizens back, but so far they have been reluctant to do so.
Pompeo also asked coalition members to help fill the gap in funding to restore essential services and rebuild critical infrastructure in Iraq to facilitate the return of millions of displaced Iraqis. He added that similar help will be required in northeastern Syria.
He also said there were growing concerns about the threat of Daesh outside of Iraq and Syria, saying the coalition should focus on West Africa and the Sahel.
Pompeo vowed that the United States will keep fighting the extremist group, and reassured worried allies convened in Washington.
“The United States will continue to lead the coalition and the world on this essential security effort,” Pompeo said.
Members of the coalition fighting Daesh had a “difference of opinion” at a meeting in Washington on Thursday on whether extremist detainees should be repatriated, the US Special Representative for Syria Jim Jeffrey said.
There was some difference of opinion on whether they should be repatriated or whether that should be something that countries are still going to look at and think about in more detail, but nonetheless, that is acknowledged as a significant problem,” Jeffrey told a news conference. — NNN-AGENCIES
