Ex-Army Chief: West May Have To Talk To Syria

The former head of the British Army says the West should consider negotiating with Syria's president to tackle Islamist extremists in Syria and Iraq.

Lord Dannatt told Sky News the time may have come to talk to Bashar al Assad about collaborating in the fight against Islamic State (IS) which now controls large areas of the two countries.

He said: "You have to at least consider the otherwise unpalatable thought that maybe we've got to have some kind of dialogue, whether it's under the counter or over the counter, with President Assad of Syria.

A Kurdish peshmerga fighter

"The old dictum that my enemy's enemy is my friend just might have some credence in this less than satisfactory and pretty extraordinary set of times that we are in."

However, UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has ruled out such a move with President Assad - a leader who is accused of carrying out war crimes during his country's conflict.

James Foley in Libya in 2011

Meanwhile, the UN has announced the number of people killed in Syria over the last three years has now risen to 191,000.

The United States has warned the IS jihadist organisation poses the most dangerous threat that America has faced in years.

The group, which beheaded American journalist James Foley in response to US airstrikes in Iraq, was "beyond just a terrorist group", US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said.

"They marry ideology, a sophistication of strategic and tactical military prowess. They are tremendously well-funded," he said, adding the threat posed by the "barbaric" extremists was "beyond anything we've seen".

A rough outline of the caliphate declared by IS militants

US airstrikes in Syria - where Mr Foley disappeared in November 2012 - have not been ruled out. When asked about that possibility, Mr Hagel said Washington was "exploring all options".

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, also did not discount attacks on IS fighters in Syria.

"This is an organisation that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision and which will eventually have to be defeated," he said.

Militants vowed to attack US targets in another video clip

Kurdish forces have been carrying out a major assault to try to retake the northeast Iraqi towns of Jalula and Sa'dya from IS.

Sky's Alex Crawford, reporting from the outskirts of Jalula, said the operation was being carried out by the Kurdish military's elite counter-terrorism unit, backed up by peshmerga forces.

She said the towns, near the Iranian border and the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, had been under the control of IS insurgents for more than two months.

The fighter who killed James Foley

The Kurdish forces have already taken back a major checkpoint, which the Sunni militants had controlled.

Crawford said: "What is significant about this assault is that they (the Kurds) are doing this pretty much entirely on their own.

"They've had very little air support. There is no evidence of any outside weaponry, military hardware to back them up."

Also, at least 30 people were reportedly killed when a Shia militia opened fired inside a Sunni mosque in Baquba, Diyala province.

IS, which was formerly known as ISIS, declared an Islamic state, or caliphate, covering large parts of the two countries earlier this year.

Michael Scheuer, a former CIA senior officer who ran operations against al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, has told Sky News defeating IS will require an "enormous" number of Western troops on the ground which would mean an "enormous bloodbath".

He said: "It's a greatly bigger problem than we've seen before, it's better armed, it's better led and certainly more vicious than al Qaeda was in the initial years."

US President Barack Obama has insisted the scope of the US strikes will remain limited, while Prime Minister David Cameron has said Britain will not fight another war in Iraq.

A criminal investigation has now been opened into Mr Foley's murder, which was recorded by the militants in a video that emerged earlier this week.

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