US President vows to destroy ISIS

US President Barack Obama has announced that destroying ISIS is his “top priority” following the terrorist attacks in Brussels (Belgium). During a visit to Argentina, Obama called on countries worldwide to unite against the Islamist extremist group. He was quoted as saying: “I’ve got a lot of things on my plate, but my top priority is to defeat Isil and to eliminate the scourge of this barbaric terrorism that’s been taking place around the world.” Obama went on to argue that defeating ISIS was at the top of his agenda, but questioned how best to defeat it “in an intelligent way.” Secretary of State John Kerry is preparing to visit Brussels later this week, during his visit he is expected to offer US condolences as well as support with the investigation.

Barack Obama has declared wiping out Islamic State his “top priority” as his secretary of state, John Kerry, prepared to visit Brussels in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks that killed 31 people and wounded 270.

Speaking during a visit to Argentina, the US president called for countries around the world to unite against Isis, which claimed responsibility for the attacks at Brussels airport and a metro station.



“I’ve got a lot of things on my plate, but my top priority is to defeat Isil and to eliminate the scourge of this barbaric terrorism that’s been taking place around the world,” Obama, using an alternative acronym for the group, told reporters. “There’s no more important item on my agenda than going after them and defeating them. The issue is, how do we do it in an intelligent way?”

He spoke alongside his Argentinian counterpart, Mauricio Macri, at the start of a trip to Argentina following his landmark visit to Cuba. He has resisted calls from some Republicans to return to Washington following the attacks.

Obama condemned presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s calls for surveillance of Muslim neighbourhoods as contrary to American values, comparing the proposal to the restrictions on religion and free speech in Cuba, which Cruz’s father fled.

“I just left a country that engages in that kind of neighbourhood surveillance, which by the way the father of Senator Cruz escaped for America, the land of the free,” he said. “The notion that we would start down that slippery slope makes absolutely no sense. It’s contrary to who we are.”

He also described Republican talk of carpet bombing in Iraq and Syria is “inhumane”, adding: “That would likely be an extraordinary mechanism for Isis to recruit more people willing to die and explode bombs in an airport or in a metro station. That’s not a smart strategy.”

Obama added: “We are approaching this in a way that has a chance of working. And it will work. And we’re not going to do things that are counterproductive simply because it’s political season. We’re going to be steady. We’re going to be resolute, and ultimately we’re going to be successful.”

Kerry will visit the Belgian capital on Friday to offer Washington’s support and convey condolences after the attacks. John Kirby, a state department spokesman, said the top US diplomat will “reiterate the strong support of the United States for Belgian efforts to both investigate these attacks and continue contributing to international efforts to counter violent extremism”.

Kerry is currently in Moscow where he will meet President Vladimir Putin on Thursday as part of a two-day trip to discuss the Syrian conflict and the ongoing peace talks, as the regime and rebel forces observe a shaky ceasefire.

Meanwhile, as the world grappled with yet another Isis atrocity, there were more provocative interventions from Australia and Israel. Malcolm Turnbull, the Australian prime minister, said Europe has effectively no internal borders and “very porous” external borders. Europeans have “allowed their security measures to slip”, he added, and this was “a lesson for all of us”.

Turnbull told ABC television: “There’s been a real breakdown in intelligence. If you can’t control your borders, you don’t know who’s coming or going. Regrettably they allowed things to slip and that weakness in European security is not unrelated to the problems they’ve been having in recent times.”

And Yisrael Katz, Israel’s minister of intelligence and atomic energy, pulled no punches when he told Israel Radio: “If in Belgium, they continue to eat chocolate and enjoy the good life with their liberalism and democracy, and do not understand that some of the Muslims there are planning terror, they will never be able to fight against them.”

The debate was going on urgently in Europe, too. The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, told reporters that “in the coming years, EU nations will have to invest massively in their security system.” Poland’s prime minister, Beata Szydło, laying flowers at the Belgian embassy in Warsaw, appealed for talks that would allow the continent to “effectively counter this plague that is consuming Europe”.

At the end of his public audience in St Peter’s Square in Rome, Pope Francis expressed his closeness to the “dear Belgian people” and asked a crowd of thousands of pilgrims and tourists to join him silently in prayer.