29 September 2014
US President urges cooperation to combat extremism
US President Barack Obama urged cooperation at the UN to tackle ‘violent extremism’ spread by groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Collectively, the world must take concrete steps to address the danger posed by ‘religiously motivated fanatics, and the trends that fuel their recruitment’. He added that ‘[t]he terrorist group known as ISIL must be degraded, and ultimately destroyed’, while emphasising that the group has terrorised all who they come across in Iraq and Syria: women and girls had been subjected to rape as a weapon of war; children had been gunned down; religious minorities had been starved to death; and innocent human beings had been beheaded on video.
‘No God condones this terror. No grievance justifies these actions. There can be no reasoning – no negotiation – with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force. So the USA will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death,’ Obama declared. He noted that already over 40 nations have offered to join his country’s coalition against the extremist group and added: ‘I ask the world to join in this effort.’