Another Iraq city falls to militants

Baghdad/Washington: US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday he would be open to cooperating with Washington’s traditional foe Iran on Iraq, and warned drone strikes were an option to halt a militant assault even as Sunni militants seized the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, said officials and residents.

“I wouldn’t rule out anything that would be constructive,” Mr Kerry said when asked if the United States would cooperate militarily with Iran, one of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s key allies. He said that the US may use drone strikes to halt the militants’ advance.

“They’re not the whole answer, but they may well be one of the options that are important,” said Mr Kerry. However, Iraq security forces insisted that they had repelled an assault on Tal Afar, a Shiite Turkman-majority town in Nineveh province, but multiple officials and a resident said militants had entered it, with one saying they were in control.

There were also reports of Syria’s army pounding major bases of the ISIL in coordination with the Baghdad government. It also bombarded ISIL headquarters at Shaddadi in Hasakeh. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia said on Monday that it rejected foreign interference in Iraq.

In a cabinet statement published on the official news agency SPA, Riyadh blamed the unfolding crisis on years of “sectarian and exclusionary” policies. Hoever, the Pentagon said on Monday that the United States has no plans to consult Iran on any potential military action in Iraq, but left the door open to diplomatic discussions on the crisis.

Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said “there is absolutely no intention, no plan to coordinate military activities between the United States and Iran.”US and Iranian diplomats might, however, address the situation in Iraq on the margins of negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program, which will take place this week in Vienna, Mr Kirby told reporters.

A senoir US official said that the country might use a critical fifth round of nuclear talks between Iran and world powers to discuss with Tehran possible cooperation on tackling the crisis raging in Iraq. British foreign secretary William Hague has also spoken with his Iranian counterpart about the crisis in Iraq.