TEHRAN, YJC. Iran has questioned the sincerity of a so-called US-led international coalition in the bloc's battle against the ISIL terrorist group.
"The so-called international coalition to fight the ISIL
group, which came into existence following a NATO summit in Wales and is taking
shape, is shrouded in serious ambiguities and there are severe misgivings about
its determination to sincerely fight the root causes of terrorism,” Foreign
Ministry Spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said on Thursday, according to Press TV.
NATO heads of state convened in the Welsh city of Newport on
4-5 September.
US Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck
Hagel told foreign and defense ministers participating in the NATO summit that
the US was forming a broad international coalition against ISIL.
Ministers from the United States, the United Kingdom,
France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark met in
Wales to hammer out a strategy for battling ISIL.
"Some of the
countries in the coalition are among financial and military supporters of
terrorists in Iraq and Syria and some others have reneged on their
international duties in the hope of [seeing] their desired political changes in
Iraq and Syria,” she added.
She noted that the double standards adopted by these
countries in dealing with extremism have contributed to the spread of terrorism
across the world.
Afkham also rejected as baseless any report that Iran and
the US are in talks on fighting the Takfiri militants.
"In the
negotiations with the US, no issue but the issue of [Iran’s] nuclear energy has
been discussed, and the US side has merely talked about its positions regarding
the ISIL group,” the Iranian official said.
The militants control large parts of Syria's northern
territory. ISIL sent its fighters into neighboring Iraq in June, quickly
seizing large swaths of land straddling the border between the two countries.