MESOP NEWS : Kurds Lieutenant General Jabar Manda – Give Us More Help Or IS Threat Will Grow

THE LONDON SECUR ITY MEETING

The commander of the Kurdish Peshmerga tells Sky News they need more Western help to continue the battle against Islamic State.By Alistair Bunkall, Defence Correspondent – 23 Jan 2015 – The Islamic State terror threat to the West will increase if the Kurdish Peshmerga are not given more help fighting the Islamist militants, their commander has warned.

Speaking exclusively to Sky News before a major conference, Lieutenant General Jabar Manda delivered a message to the 21 foreign ministers gathering in London.”We need more equipment, we need new weapons and we need the air strikes,” he said.”We need the continuous support and training. We are in need of ammunition. We need new weapons to win this war.”He thanked the British military for their help training his troops and said it has helped the Peshmerga push IS fighters back.

Despite this, 800 Kurdish soldiers have been killed and 4,000 wounded because of insufficient protection and Lt Gen Manda said armoured cars are needed to stop so many soldiers being killed.He also said that stores of ammunition are decreasing after an early rush of donors.”IS is an international terrorist group threatening all over the world just like we saw in France. They are threatening America and Britain and other countries,” he said.”If the other nations like to fight alongside us then we have no problem with that, we would like to fight with them.

And he warned that if they do not get the support, “the threat to Europe and other countries will be more.”Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and US Secretary of State John Kerry have hosted a conference on IS in London attended by the main players of the 60 nation coalition, including Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al Abadi.

Mr Hammond restated the global coalition’s commitment to defeat IS and the “scourge of violent Islamist extremism”.He said airstrikes have helped to halt the group’s advance and Iraqi forces are being re-equipped and re-trained.Mr Hammond said the coalition also discussed the insurgency’s financing and the flow of foreign fighters to the group.Mr Kerry said IS’s momentum in Iraq had been halted and in some cases reversed and that US weapons for government forces would be arriving very shortly.Mr al Abadi said he had seen a rise in the delivery of arms to his forces and in the air campaign over the past month. He also said the drop in the global oil price was disastrous for his country’s finances and could hurt its ability to fight IS militants. The Iraqi delegation had not wanted its prime minister to stand alongside Mr Kerry and Mr Hammond at the podium because they regard the two foreign ministers as junior in rank.Hanging over the conference are the lives of two Japanese hostages. IS released a video on Tuesday morning threatening to kill them unless a ransom of $200m was paid in 72 hours. That time runs out on Friday morning. http://news.sky.com/story/1412462/kurds-give-us-more-help-or-is-threat-will-grow