United States president, Barack Obama and Iraqi prime minister, Haidar al-Abadi are set to the discuss the fight against the Islamic State in a White House meeting.
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US president and Iraqi prime minister set to discuss ISIS in White House meeting
The meeting is likely to be dominated by Iraqi requests for U.S. arms and tension over Iran's role on the battlefield.
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According to Reuters, the meeting is likely to be dominated by Iraqi requests for U.S. arms and tension over Iran's role on the battlefield.
The trip, which is Abadi's first since becoming Prime Minister, will see him seek billions of dollars in drones and other U.S. weapons to combat Islamic State, which seized much of northern and central Iraq last year.
However, Obama's administration, which welcomed Abadi's ascension after a tricky relationship with former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, may not agree to all of the requests.
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Either way, the meeting is set to convey a U.S. stamp of approval for a leader who has sought to be more inclusive than his predecessor in governing Iraq.
In August 2014, Obama authorized the first U.S. air strikes on Iraq since the 2011 U.S. troop withdrawal and has deployed about 3,000 American military forces to train and advise Iraqi and Kurdish forces to fight Islamic State.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday that "if there are specific ideas that Prime Minister Abadi has for stepped-up assistance, then we'll obviously consider them seriously, the goal is to continue the obviously deep coordination that already exists between the United States and Iraq. This is a partnership that the United States is obviously deeply invested in."
Obama, who came to power on the back of a promise to end the war in Iraq, is however restricted by public aversion to U.S. entanglement in another regional conflict and congressional constraints on his budget authority.
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