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The Guardian
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, has urged Iraq's leaders to stand united against an Islamist insurgency that has reached the outskirts of Baghdad after routing the Iraqi army in the north.Kerry reiterated Washington's support for Iraqi forces, saying US backing will be "intense and sustained" after holding almost two hours of talks with Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, in Baghdad. The US has criticised Maliki for fuelling the insurgency in northern Iraq by alienating the Sunni minority. While the US has not said publicly that Maliki should make way for a less divisive figure, Iraqi officials say such a message has been delivered behind the scenes.
At his press conference, however, Kerry insisted that no country – including the US – has the right to pick Iraq's leaders. "That is up to the people of Iraq," he said, adding that Maliki had reaffirmed his commitment to form a new government by 1 July.
Kerry said on Sunday the US would not choose the government in Baghdad, but added that it had noted the dissatisfaction among Kurds, Sunnis and some Shias with Maliki's leadership.
DW
Washington's top diplomat, John Kerry, flew in to Baghdad on Monday for a face-to-face meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki. Their discussion lasted more than an hour and a half.According to a statement from the prime minister's office, al-Maliki told Kerry that the recent onslaught led by jihadists from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) "represents a threat not only to Iraq but to regional and international peace."
Al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government has been accused of fueling the crisis by excluding Sunni Muslims from power and pursuing a sectarian agenda. It's something Kerry was expected to bring up in the closed-door talks. He told journalists afterward that Iraq's leaders faced a "moment of decision."
"Iraq faces an existential threat and Iraq's leaders have to meet that threat," Kerry said on Monday.
After meeting al-Maliki, Kerry was also scheduled to meet influential Shiite clerics and Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi, one of Iraq's highest-ranking Sunnis, along with Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, who is a Kurd.
Iraq's parliament is working to set up a new government following elections in April.
NPR
As Sunni militants make gains against Iraq's Shiite-led central government, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry paid a previously unannounced visit to Baghdad to meet with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday.Maliki has been criticized for not being more inclusive of Sunnis and Kurds in his government — a change the Obama administration is calling for as part of any plans for military support.
"The Obama administration has been hard-pressing the Iraqi leader to create a more inclusive government," NPR's Jackie Northam reports from Baghdad. "It's felt that Maliki's marginalization of Iraq's Kurdish and Sunni communities has helped spawn the violence we're seeing now in the north of the country and the west."
McClatchy DC
WASHINGTON — The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria sprang from a largely self-funded, corporation-style prototype whose resilience to counterterrorism operations was proven by the time Abu Bakr al Baghdadi assumed command in 2010.The militant group Baghdadi inherited had in place a sophisticated bureaucracy that was almost obsessive about record-keeping. Its middle-managers detailed, for example, the number of wives and children each fighter had, to gauge compensation rates upon death or capture, and listed expenditures in neat Excel spreadsheets that noted payments to an “assassination platoon” and “Al Mustafa Explosives Company.” Income from the Sunni Muslim militants’ looting of Shiite Muslim-owned property was recorded as “spoils.”
By the time Baghdadi took charge, the group even had begun siphoning a share of Iraq’s oil wealth, opening gas stations in the north, smuggling oil and extorting money from industry contractors _ enterprises that Baghdadi would build on and replicate as he expanded operations across the border into Syria, ultimately breaking from his al Qaida roots and declaring himself emir of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
BBC
Sunni rebels in Iraq say they have fully captured the country's main oil refinery at Baiji, north of Baghdad.The refinery had been under siege for 10 days with the militant offensive being repulsed several times.
The complex supplies a third of Iraq's refined fuel and the battle has already led to petrol rationing.
Insurgents, led by the group Isis, have overrun a swathe of territory north and west of Baghdad including Iraq's second-biggest city, Mosul.
They are bearing down on a vital dam near Haditha and have captured all border crossings to Syria and Jordan.
A rebel spokesman said the Baiji refinery, in Salahuddin province, would now be handed over to local tribes to administer.
The spokesman said that the advance towards Baghdad would continue.