BAGHDAD -- Wrapping up a day of crisis talks with Iraqi leaders, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that the Sunni militants seizing territory in Iraq had become such a threat that the United States might not wait for Iraqi politicians to form a new government before taking military action.
"They do pose a threat," Kerry said, referring to the fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. "They cannot be given safe haven anywhere.
"That's why, again, I reiterate the president will not be hampered if he deems it necessary if the formation is not complete," he added, referring to the Iraqi efforts to establish a new multisectarian government that bridges the deep divisions among the majority Shiites and minority Sunnis, Kurds and other smaller groups.
President Barack Obama "has reserved the right to himself, as he should, to make a decision at any time" to undertake strikes, Kerry said at a news conference at the heavily fortified U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. "We are implementing a strategy now; we are not waiting," he said.
U.S. officials, drawn increasingly back into a struggle that Obama had sought to end, do not want to be seen as taking sides in a sectarian conflict. They have stressed in recent days that the establishment of a cross-sectarian Iraqi government would make it easier for the United States to provide military support for Iraq, including airstrikes.
Kerry flew in a military aircraft to Iraq on Monday from Amman, Jordan, to try to hasten that political process. He began his day with a meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq and some of his top security aides, which lasted 100 minutes.
Kerry then met in rapid succession with Ammar al-Hakim, a Shiite cleric from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a Shiite political party that is a rival of al-Maliki's State of Law political coalition, and with Osama al-Nujaifi, the Sunni speaker of Iraq's parliament. Kerry also met with Hoshyar Zebari, the Kurd who serves as Iraq's foreign minister.
In a news conference, Kerry said that he had urged Iraqi politicians to move quickly to form a new government and that they had agreed they needed to act fast.
But there has been intensive jockeying for power not just among the main Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs but also within them. Experts have warned that the government formation could drag on for months.
Iraqi leaders, Kerry noted, had affirmed the need to convene parliament by July to begin the constitutional process of forming the new government as required by the April parliamentary elections. The process is supposed to begin with the selection of parliament speaker, a post that has traditionally gone to a Sunni, and will then move to picking a new president, a position that has traditionally gone to a Kurd. Then a prime minister will be picked: either al-Maliki, a Shiite, or one of his Shiite rivals.
July 1 is the deadline under the Iraqi constitution for al-Maliki to convene the newly elected parliament. After that, the parliament has 30 days to name a president, and then the president has 15 days to nominate a new prime minister. Four years ago, the process dragged on for eight months.
While the political consultations continue behind closed doors, militants have become a growing regional danger. Its fighters have basically erased Iraq's western border with Syria, which is expected to strengthen their position there. They have also taken the town of Rutba in western Iraq, which sits astride the road to Jordan and could head south from there to Saudi Arabia.
Within Iraq, U.S. officials say, the group has set its sights on destroying the Shiite shrine in Samarra, which would likely lead to an explosion of sectarian violence in Iraq. An attack on the shrine in early 2006 escalated a wave of sectarian killings that was not reduced until the U.S. troop surge in 2007 and 2008.
"Clearly, everyone understands that Samarra is an important line," Kerry said. "Historically, an assault on Samarra created enormous problems in Iraq. That is something that we all do not want to see happen again. And so the president and the team, the entire security team, are watching this movement and these events very, very closely."
Islamic State of Iraq's advance toward Baghdad has slowed since the first days of its offensive, but the threat remains high, according to a U.S. official who wasn't authorized to comment publicly.
The U.S. official said the militant offensive has left Iraqi political leaders extremely anxious, with some looking to the U.S. as if it could wave a magic wand to make the crisis go away, the official said.
Increased U.S. surveillance and intelligence-gathering is already providing better information to Iraq's military in remote border regions, the official said, and the U.S. will deliver additional supplies to the Iraqi government and military as early as Wednesday.
So great are the concerns that Kerry stressed Monday that if U.S. action is taken soon -- Obama has said that he is considering airstrikes -- it should not be interpreted as a gesture of political support for al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government, but rather as a strike against the militants.
Such a decision by Obama, Kerry said, should not be considered to be an act of "support for the existing prime minister or for one sect or another."
Kerry is in the Middle East and Europe this week to discuss the regional instability triggered in the Mideast by Iraq and in Europe by Ukraine. He's scheduled to fly to Brussels later this week for meetings with his counterparts in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Meanwhile, in Hillah, south of Baghdad, dozens of Sunni prisoners were said have been killed as they were being transported by security forces to a more secure prison. As the troubling news emerged about a new sectarian massacre, officials gave conflicting explanations.
Security officials said that at least 69 prisoners were killed, many of them senior leaders of al-Qaida in Iraq, the forerunner of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. One account, given by an intelligence officer in Hillah who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the policemen who were transporting the prisoners "just stopped the buses on the highway before they reached their final destination and shot them dead."
However, other security and local officials said the convoy was ambushed by militants, and that some prisoners died during the clashes.
Sadiq al-Sultani, the governor of Hillah, said at a news conference Monday that "the convoy of prisoners was attacked by militants on the highway," and that 10 militants and 15 prisoners were killed. "The rest of the prisoners were transported to another jail," he said.
The episode in Hillah follows the discovery in a police station last week of the bodies of 44 Sunni prisoners who were held by the Shiite-led Iraqi government in Baqouba, north of Baghdad.
Information for this article was contributed by Michael R. Gordon, Suadad Al-Salhy and Tim Arango of The New York Times and by Nicole Gaouette, Ladane Nasseri and David Lerman of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 06/24/2014