World leaders pledge to help Iraq by 'all possible means'

European and Arab powers brought together by the US in Paris, agreed on Monday to support Iraq’s new government by “all possible means” to fight Islamic State militants, including military aid. Iran, however, spurned any possibility of taking part, although the US said it remained commited to further talks.

Vowing to “push the Islamic State (IS) back” and “make it disappear,” French President Francois Hollande said at an international conference that the threat posed by the IS militants in Iraq was “global” and that the response must also be global in nature.

"When you have a group of this kind there is no other approach than to unite and defend oneself. That is what the international community has decided to do," Hollande said while urging “clear, loyal and strong” global support for Baghdad.

Following the talks, Iraqi president Fuad Masum also denounced IS. He said its "detestable ideology" went back to "obscurantist, bloodthirsty thinking that has its source in the darkness of history".

But the conference - although a building block in an uneasy coalition that President Barack Obama is assembling against the militants - also highlighted a continuing rift between the US and Iran, a major regional power that borders Iraq and whose cooperation is seen as vital to defeating IS.

Hours after the conference took place, Tehran said it had rejected US overtures to help fight against IS. Its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Iran was approached by US Secretary of State John Kerry, but that Iran turned down America's offer because of Washington's "dirty hands".

The United States then quickly responded by saying it too was opposed to military cooperation with Iran in Iraq but it did stress it was still open to further talks. The US State Department said: “We are not and will not coordinate militarily. There may be another opportunity on the margins in the future to discuss Iraq.”

The tit-for-tat exchange between the two powers casts doubt on ongoing speculation that the US and Iran might form an alliance of convenience to confront IS.

The Independent’s Middle East expert, Patrick Cockburn, said that fear of IS is producing strange bedfellows in an “un-coalition of the unwilling”.

“…the US has states and movements who are actively fighting [Islamic State] on the ground, but many are long-demonised enemies of America and the UK,” Cockburn said.

“The most potent fighting force on the [Iraqi] government side is the Shiite militias, most though not all of which are led or advised by Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers. Iran is crucial for the defence of the Baghdad government.”

Le Monde in a key editorial also argued that the response to IS has to be a huge diplomatic effort as well as military.

“Bombing bases scattered over a vast area, often in the city, will not be easy. We must force Baghdad to make peace with its minorities. We must seek to put an end to the Syrian tragedy. This implies a massive political and diplomatic investment. At least as much as a military intervention.”

The severity of the situation has left the west scrambling to find a compromise. Following the Paris meeting, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond issued a statement urging Iran to cooperate with an international coalition against IS in Iraq, even if Tehran did not join the group.

"It was always unlikely that Iran would become a fully fledged member of the coalition but I think we should continue to hope that Iran will align itself broadly with the direction that the coalition is going," Hammond told reporters.

He also said he hoped Iran would be "cooperative with the plans that the coalition is putting in place, if not actively a part of the coalition."

The gathering in Paris came just a day after IS released a video showing a hooded militant killing British aid worker David Haines, 44, the third western hostage to be decapitated by the group in a month.

IS controls about a quarter of all land in Syria, and in recent months has managed to seize control of 40 percent of Iraq, with the CIA estimating that the group could have as many as 31,500 fighters on the ground.

Several Arab countries, along with France, have also signed on to the US-led anti-IS alliance and said they would participate in  US air strikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, US officials told Reuters on Sunday.

It was not immediately clear which countries had made the offers but White House officials have indicated that Secretary Kerry will name the Arab countries in an address to Congress later this week, following his return from Paris.

At the conference Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, said many of the participants at the Paris conference spoke of the need to sever the Islamic State’s funding, adding that a conference on this subject would soon be organised by Bahrain.