World leaders vow to help Iraq

The world's top diplomats pledged yesterday to support Iraq in its fight against Islamic State militants by "any means necessary", including "appropriate military assistance", as leaders stressed the urgency of the crisis.

Representatives from around 30 countries and international organisations, including the United States, Russia and China, gathered in Paris as the savage beheading over the weekend of a third Western hostage raised the stakes in the fight against the marauding jihadists.

In a joint statement after the talks, diplomats vowed to support Baghdad "by any means necessary, including appropriate military assistance, in line with the needs expressed by the Iraqi authorities, in accordance with international law and without jeopardising civilian security."

They stressed that IS extremists were "a threat not only to Iraq but also to the entire international community" and underscored the "urgent need" to remove them from Iraq, where they control some 40 percent of the territory.

However, the final statement made no mention of Syria, where extremists hold a quarter of the country and where Bashar al-Assad's regime still had friends around the Paris conference table, including Russia.

The meeting was the latest in a series of frantic diplomatic efforts to build a broad coalition against the jihadists and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said meetings would come "thick and fast" in the coming days ahead of a UN general assembly next week.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been criss-crossing the region to drum up support, said over the weekend that "all bases were covered" in terms of implementing US President Barack Obama's strategy to destroy the jihadists.

Ten Arab states including Saudi Arabia are also among the countries backing the coalition, and Australia has pledged to deploy 600 troops to the United Arab Emirates, a regional Washington ally.

The goal of the conference was "to agree on a strong political message to the new Iraqi government, to get ourselves ready for the fight," said one French diplomat who declined to be named.

However, Iran, which was not invited to the conference, said it had rejected US overtures to help in the fight against the militants.

"Right from the start, the United States asked through its ambassador in Iraq whether we could cooperate," supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a statement on his official website.

"I said no, because they have dirty hands," said Khamenei, who has the final say on all matters of state in Iran.

He accused Washington of seeking a "pretext to do in Iraq and Syria what it already does in Pakistan -- bomb anywhere without authorisation."

The United States insisted yesterday that it was opposed to military cooperation with Iran but was open to further talks.