US, coalition allies regroup after attacks

With jihadist attacks proliferating around the world, the United States has reassembled its coalition partners for meetings Wednesday and Thursday to review a two-year-old war that has so far failed to eliminate the Islamic State group.

The militant group may have lost ground in Iraq and Syria, but in recent weeks it has claimed horrific attacks in Nice, Istanbul, Baghdad and Dhaka that have left hundreds dead and injured.

The attacks are "going to be a primary focus, obviously, of the discussions," Brett McGurk, President Barack Obama's special envoy to the anti-IS coalition, acknowledged.

For two days, US Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter will meet with about 40 of their counterparts in Washington, including France's Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.

Echoing French Prime Minister Manuel Valls' warning of more attacks ahead and more "innocents killed," McGurk also cautioned: "Nobody can say these attacks are going to stop.

"Unfortunately, I think we are going to see more of these," he said.

The problem, says Michael Weiss, an expert at the Atlantic Council think tank, is that "at the territorial level ... ISIS is down but not out." ISIS and IS are an alternate acronym for the Islamic State group.

"It has lost its ability to back and hold large swaths of terrain but it has not lost its ability to wage ... opportunistic attacks," he said.

French military intelligence estimates that about 100 foreigners continue to enter Syria from Turkey each week to join Islamic State, French daily Le Figaro reported yesterday .

France's foreign minister said on Sunday that questions needed to be asked on whether Turkey was a viable partner in the fight against Islamic State in Syria and would raise the issue in a coalition meeting in the Washington.

Washington maintains that since its peak in 2014 IS has lost nearly 50 percent of the Iraqi territory it conquered and between 20 and 30 percent of its Syrian strongholds.

Kerry just returned from Moscow where he reach an agreement with the Russians to cooperate more closely in an attempt to salvage a failing truce and focus on the jihadists.

But Kerry said the concrete measures adopted by Russia and the United States would not be disclosed to allow the "quiet business" of peacemaking to continue.