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8/10/14, "Iraq Chaldean patriarch says US strikes offer little hope," AFP, Baghdad
"Iraq's most prominent Christian cleric voiced his
disappointment Sunday at the scope of US intervention, which he said
offered little hope that jihadists would be defeated and displaced
people could go home.
"The position of the American president Obama only to give military
assistance to protect Arbil is disappointing," Chaldean Patriarch Louis
Sako wrote in an open letter.
US President Barack Obama on
Thursday announced he had authorised air strikes against Islamic State
targets in Iraq to protect US personnel in the Kurdish capital Arbil and
avert a genocide against the Yazidis in the Sinjar region.
Three
days of strikes appeared to yield some results, with Kurdish troops
reclaiming towns southwest of Arbil they had lost days earlier and some
of the thousands of Yazidis who had been trapped on a mountain managing
to escape.
Obama has stressed that the strikes would be limited,
and Sako argued that may not be enough to wrest back the main northern
city of Mosul from the jihadists.
The patriarch described the
prospect of having to wait for Iraqi government forces to start fighting
alongside the peshmerga as "very depressing".
"While the country is under fire, the politicians in Baghdad are fighting for power," Sako said.
On
Sunday, parliament adjourned for nine days, despite ever-increasing
international and domestic pressure to agree on a nominee for the post
of prime minister.
Obama and other world leaders have argued that
forming a new, inclusive government was a prerequisite for any effective
military counter-offensive.
According to several aid groups, the number of people fleeing over the past week of fighting alone has topped 200,000.
Among them were all the residents of Iraq's largest Christian town of Qaraqosh and its surrounding areas."
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