NATO would consider any Iraq request for IS help

NATO would "seriously" consider any request from Iraq for assistance in a war against insurgents from the Islamic State (IS), NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Thursday.

"We will discuss what individual allies and what NATO can do to counter the threat from the terrorist organisation, so-called Islamic State," he said before the start of a two-day summit of leaders from the Western military alliance in Newport, Wales.

"We haven't received any request for NATO engagement. I'm sure that if the Iraqi government were to forward a request for NATO assistance, that would be considered seriously by NATO allies," the secretary general said.

"I do believe that the international community as a whole has an obligation to stop the Islamic State from advancing further," he said, after two US journalists were executed by IS militants as retaliation for US air strikes in Iraq.

One of the videos also said a British hostage would be killed next if bombing continued.

The NATO summit billed as the most important since the Cold War got underway Thursday with calls to stand up to Russia over Ukraine and confront Islamic State militants.

The Ukraine crisis tops the agenda but the 28 leaders must also tackle new threats posed by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

"To the southeast we see the rise of a terrorist organisation, the so-called Islamic State," Rasmussen said, adding: "We will take important steps to counter these threats."

British Prime Minister David Cameron and US President Barack Obama said in an op-ed in the Times newspaper on Thursday that their countries would not be "cowed" by the threats.

Britain actively considering arming Kurds

Britain is considering providing arms directly to Kurdish forces fighting IS militants in northern Iraq, Cameron said on Thursday.

"Britain has been helping get arms to the Kurds and we are prepared to do more. We are considering actively whether to give them arms ourselves and whether we can do more directly to train Kurdish militia," the prime minister told ITV television.

The Royal Air Force (RAF) has been transporting ammunition supplied by allies and British non-lethal equipment to the regional government in Erbil, including 10 tonnes of British body armour overnight Wednesday.

But London is moving closer to directly arming the Kurds and providing them with training following the increased threat posed by IS militants who have seized territory across Iraq and Syria.

Asked if Britain would join the US in air strikes on IS forces, Cameron said on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Newport: "I'm certainly not ruling anything out and I will always act in the British national interest."

The prime minister last month appointed Lieutenant General Simon Mayall, a government military advisor, as special envoy to Iraq and sent him to the region to discuss how to deal with the threat of IS.

On Sunday, Germany announced it would be sending arms to Iraqi Kurds, breaking with a post-war policy of refusing to send weapons into conflict zones.