Kerry comments in Rome - note theme of stabilizing countries to work against ISIS metasasizing

[karynnj]

Last edited Tue Feb 2, 2016, 01:32 PM - Edit history (1)

After listing coalition gains against ISIS - even as they have attacked in Paris and CA - on both Syria and Libya he speaks of need to help get functioning governments.

He told his audience that it was essential that Libya's new unity government maintains an edge over terrorists, especially given the country's resources.

"The last thing in the world you want is a false caliphate with access to billions of dollars of oil revenue," Kerry said.

He stressed the need to push "full speed ahead" in training security personnel and creating a "safe environment" for a government to stand up and operate.

"This is, I think, a major obligation for those countries — us among them — who were there at the very beginning when we felt compelled to protect the people... being slaughtered by the dictator of the country," Kerry said.

At a later news conference, the secretary of state also called for efforts to reach a ceasefire in Syria in order to end human suffering — such as the starvation deaths in Madaya — and to weaken ISIS.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/isis-rebuffed-iraq-syria-now-threatens-libya-kerry-n509726

Edited to add a link to the full speech on State.gov - so I can quote those ideas more completely.

Daesh is, in the sense of metastasizing – and I’m not going to call it like a cancer; it’s more like a weed, where you can cut off the top of the weed or you can pull part of it out but if you leave the tentacles there it can continue to grow. And we’ve got to come at it in a way over this next year that gets right underneath the ground and at the weed itself.

So we need to build more progress and we believe we have a plan in place to be able to do that, choking every resource, choking every method of spreading its terror, and we’re going to continue, I guarantee you, not just to do what we’re doing today, but President Obama has made it clear we’re going to do more even, and we have been going through a series of meetings to define what that will be and over time we will lay that out.

Now, today we need to make clear to everybody that we also need to expand our financial contributions to the funding facility for Iraqi stabilization. It’s one thing to clean Ramadi but you’ve got to come in underneath it and make things work. Services have to be delivered. Police have to work. Schools have to open. There has to be stabilization and we need to build that so people can rebuild their lives and believe there was a reason to go through this fight.

We have seen what these investments mean in Tikrit, for instance. Thanks to more than $50 million committed to the stabilization by members of this coalition over 90 percent of Tikrit’s people are now returned to the city. The main university reopened its doors. The community has overcome Daesh’s tyranny through its own determination and perseverance. It’s a great story. It really is. When you think about where we were six months ago in Tikrit and where we are today, it’s a great story. Tikrit may serve as a model for other newly liberated communities such as Ramadi, Sinjar, Kobani. As we all know, Assistant Secretary and Special Envoy Brett McGurk just went in with a couple of his colleagues – France and Britain – went into Kobani the other day and he can personally tell you what he saw of what is happening.

Beyond our financial support, we have another challenge. We have to help the Government of Iraq remove the thousands of lethal explosives that are left behind by the terrorists. What happens is when Daesh leaves almost every house they put a booby trap hoping that when the family comes back or somebody opens a door or walks in they’re blown up. So war continues in that sense. We, many of the countries around this table, have particular expertise in ordnance removal and we need to do this.

It also means we need to back the broad-based diplomatic effort to de-escalate the conflict and achieve a political transition in Syria. We’ve done a lot of work – everybody at this table. A lot of you are on the telephone. A lot of us have been talking together. They are – the talks officially begin now in Geneva. I’ll come back to that in a minute. But we have an opportunity here that we didn’t have a few months ago and my profound gratitude to every country that came to Vienna twice and to New York under tough circumstances. Everybody’s schedules were pressed but we got to the talks and that was the objective.

In Libya, we’re on the brink of getting a government of national unity and that will prevent Daesh from turning Libya into a stranglehold on that country’s future. And as everybody here knows, has – that country has resources. The last thing in the world you want is a false caliphate with access to billions of dollars of oil revenue. So it means we need to push full speed ahead with training security personnel and we need to ensure that there is a decisive military edge not just to clear territory but to create a safe environment for a government to begin to stand up and operate. And this is, I think, a major obligation for those countries – us among them – who were there at the very beginning when we felt compelled to protect the people from 10,000 or more people being slaughtered by the dictator of the country.

Finally, our coalition has a profound responsibility to answer the urgent, the compelling, the stunning – to address the absolutely stunning images and reality of life for real people on the ground in Syria. This is required by international law, my friends, and it is required by simple human decency. The situation on the ground for the Syrian people is unfathomable. We haven’t seen a catastrophe like this since World War II and it’s unfolding before our eyes. People in Madaya eating leaves and grass or animals of one kind or another that they manage to capture. People who have not had a resupply for months. A hundred and thirteen requests by the United Nations to provide supplies and only 13 have been granted by the Assad regime. Starvation as a tactic of war is against the laws of war and it is being used every single day as a tactic by the Assad regime. So we need to speak out powerfully about the urgent need of Geneva to deliver a ceasefire, to deliver humanitarian assistance, and to get civilians from stopping being bombed on a daily basis by those with airplanes who are dropping bombs.

http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2016/02/251992.htm