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 Around 20 coalition ministers met Iraqi Prime Minister Haider
al-Abadi in Paris, in part to persuade his Shi'ite Muslim-led
government to repair relations with Iraq's Sunni minority to
strengthen its campaign against the Sunni Islamic State, also known
as ISIS.
Despite a show of unity, Abadi appeared to reject suggestions that
Baghdad was paying insufficient attention to reconciliation with
Sunni. He said the world had "failed" Iraq, highlighting the
significant number of foreign Islamic State volunteers entering Iraq
from countries in the coalition.
"The talks allowed us to reaffirm our unity and joint determination
to fight the terrorists of Daesh (Islamic State)," French Foreign
Minister Laurent Fabius said after the meeting.
"This military strategy is inseparable to implementing political
reconciliation in Iraq," he told reporters. "There isn't on one side
the military and on the other political."
 Abadi said he was committed to Sunni-Shi'ite rapprochement but
accused the international coalition of not doing enough to tackle
Islamic State, which swept across swathes of northern and western
Iraq in 2014 and now holds about a third of the country.
"We can make sacrifices to fight Islamic State but the international
coalition has to support us," he said.
Abadi said his forces were making headway against Islamic State but
that Baghdad urgently needed more intelligence and weapons,
including anti-tank guns, from the coalition.
He said Baghdad had received very few arms or ammunition despite
coalition pledges to provide more. "Almost none. We are relying on
ourselves," he said, noting that he was awaiting United Nations
approval to buy weapons from Iran and Russia.
"The air campaign is useful for us, but it's not enough. It's too
little. Surveillance is very small. Daesh is mobile and moves in
small groups," said Abadi.
U.S. ANTI-TANK ROCKETS DELIVERED
The Pentagon, confirming a Reuters report from on Monday, said the
United States had delivered anti-tank rockets to Iraq.
"We're giving 1,000 to the Iraqis immediately. The other 1,000 are
being held," Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren told a news
briefing.
The Pentagon said the other 1,000 were for training Iraqi forces and
future contingencies.
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Last month, the Iraqi government had its worst military setback in
nearly a year when Islamic State seized Ramadi from a weakened Iraqi
army. The capital of the overwhelmingly Sunni province of Anbar is
90 km (55 miles) west of Baghdad.
Since then, government troops and allied Shi'ite militia have been
building up positions around Ramadi. Many Iraqi Sunnis dislike the
ultra-hardline Islamic State but also fear the Shi'ite militias
after years of bloody sectarian strife.
The plan to retake Ramadi includes accelerating the training and
equipping of local Sunni tribes in coordination with Anbar
authorities, expanding recruitment into the Iraqi army and ensuring
all associated forces act under Baghdad's command.
Abadi, a moderate Shi'ite, can only persuade Sunni tribes to fight
Islamic State if he demonstrates control over the powerful Shi'ite
paramilitaries whose muscle he now depends on.
Shi'ite fighters have been benefiting from the battlefield expertise
of military advisers from top Shi'ite power Iran.
In a sign of persistent factional divisions, Iraq's northern
autonomous Kurdistan region criticized Baghdad for "excluding" it
from the Paris talks, saying the snub demeaned the sacrifices of its
peshmerga forces also fighting Islamic State.
In a further sign of internal tension, a meeting of Sunni tribes in
Paris was canceled and Sheikh Jamal al-Dhari, a leader of the
prominent al-Zoba tribe, said Abadi could not deliver since he was a
puppet of Iran.
"We need real reconciliation that will see the Iraqi people find a
political solution to what is going on, then the Sunnis will get rid
of Daesh," he said.
"But we will not get rid of Daesh to replace it with Qasem Soleimani
in Baghdad," he said, referring to the commander of the Quds Force
of Iran's Revolutionary Guards who has become a familiar sight on
the Shi'ite side of Iraq's battlefields.
(Additional reporting by Isabel Coles in Erbil and Phil Stewart in
Washington; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Toni Reinhold)
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