Kurdish leader pushes U.S. for weapons to fight Islamic State

WASHINGTON — The president of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq said Friday that U.S. officials assured him that Kurdish forces will receive weapons and military assistance to fight the Islamic State militants.

“They assured us these weapons will be delivered” to the Kurdish fighters, known as the peshmerga

Barzani spoke with reporters after a week of meetings with President Obama, Vice President Biden, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and other officials to ask for more U.S. support for the Kurdish fighters.

The discussions also covered plans to liberate Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, from Islamic State control, he said.

Last week, the House Armed Services Committee approved a bill that calls for direct U.S. military support to Kurdish and Sunni factions in Iraq. Biden and Carter said they oppose such a measure, preferring to support a unified Iraq and for weapons deliveries to be coordinated and funneled through Iraq’s Shiite-controlled central government.

Barzani said Mosul is important to the Kurds because Islamic State fighters there threaten Kurdish communities, But he said U.S. defense officials want to ensure there is a plan to govern the city that respects the many sects and ethnic groups who call it home before launching any offensive.

Kurdish forces were a bulwark against the Islamic State’s brutal sweep across western Iraq last summer and have retaken some territory in recent months. But Barzani said the Iraqi government has withheld weapons that his fighters needed, forcing Kurdish fighters in August to turn to Iran for supplies.

“At the time, we were in dire need of a certain type of ammunition during an embargo” by the previous Iraqi government led by then-prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, Barzani said. “Iran was able to provide us with this type of ammunition at that time.”

While Iran does not provide the peshmerga

He said the Islamic State must be defeated in Iraq, especially in Mosul, before Kurdish authorities will call for a referendum on Kurdish independence, an aspiration that goes back centuries.

Defeating the Islamic State would also require its defeat in Syria, where a civil war is now in its fifth year and is unlikely to end soon, Barzani said.

The Kurdish leader spoke a day after Carter, the new Defense secretary, announced that a U.S. training mission has begun in Turkey for a 4,000-man force of Syrian opposition fighters who would counter the Islamic State in Syria.