US Vice President Joe Biden on Monday sought to end an embarrassing rift between Washington and Baghdad after Pentagon boss Ash Carter blamed Iraqi forces for the fall of Ramadi.
The White House said Biden called Iraqi’s prime minister Haider al-Abadi, just hours after the US defense secretary suggested that the Islamic State group won control of the city because “Iraqi forces showed no will to fight.”
Biden “recognized the enormous sacrifice and bravery of Iraqi forces over the past 18 months in Ramadi and elsewhere,” the White House said.
As well as rowing back Carter’s comments, Biden called to “reaffirm US support for the Iraqi government’s fight against” Islamic State jihadists.
Carter’s comments were seen as undercutting a US-Iraqi collective front in the fight against the radical militants.
They were also seen as humiliating for Iraq’s prime minister, as he desperately tries to hold his country together with a thinly stretched army and assorted ethnic and sectarian militias whose loyalties lie outside Baghdad.
— AFP
US Vice President Joe Biden in Istanbul, Turkey, November 22, 2014 (AFP/Bulent Kilic)
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