EU states helping to fund ISIS?
EU states helping to fund ISIS?Reuters

The Arab League said Sunday that it would back military action led by the US and Europe against IS (aka ISIS or ISIL), the Islamist group that has taken over large portions of Syria and Iraq. US President Barack H Obama said in an interview Sunday that the US would step up its aerial campaign against the Islamist group, but would not commit ground forces to the battle.

On Saturday, Arab League chief Nabil Al Arabi met with US Secretary of State John Kerry. Speaking Sunday at the meeting of the group, Al Arabi gave the League's full backing to active military action against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group. “What is needed is a clear decision for a comprehensive confrontation, militarily and politically,” said Al Arabi. The League is expected to ratify and official resolution recording its support for the US activity.

In the interview on NBC's Meet the Press, Obama said that the US would “hunt down" ISIS terrorists "wherever they are.” The US action against ISIS would consist of a major air campaign, but US troops would not be deployed.

“This is not the equivalent of the Iraq war,” where US troops were advising Iraqi government soldiers in the field, Obama said, stressing that the US would work with “regional partners” to tout the Islamists. “Over the course of months, we are going to be able to not just blunt the momentum of (IS),” Obama said. “We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities. We're going to shrink the territory that they control. And that's how we're going to defeat them.”

Obama will make a speech on Wednesday to “describe what our game plan's going to be,” and meet congressional leaders on Tuesday to seek their support for his strategy to halt the vicious Islamist group, reported Voice of America (VOA).

The president, who campaigned on getting U.S. troops out of Iraq, has struggled to articulate how he wants to address the Islamic State group, telling reporters last month that “we don't have a strategy yet” to tackle the group.