Obama sends U.S. military advisers to Iraq as battle rages over refinery

President Barack Obama said on Thursday he was sending up to 300 U.S. military advisers to Iraq but stressed the need for a political solution to the Iraqi crisis as government forces battled Sunni rebels for control of the country's biggest refinery.

Speaking after a meeting with his national security team, Obama said he was prepared to take "targeted" military action later if deemed necessary, thus delaying but still keeping open the prospect of U.S. air strikes against a militant insurgency. But he insisted that U.S. troops would not return to combat in Iraq.

Obama called on the Shi'ite government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to take urgent steps to heal the country's sectarian rift, something U.S. officials say the Iraqi leader has failed to do and which an al Qaeda splinter group leading the Sunni revolt has exploited.

"We do not have the ability to simply solve this problem by sending in tens of thousands of troops and committing the kinds of blood and treasure that has already been expended in Iraq," Obama told reporters. "Ultimately, this is something that is going to have to be solved by the Iraqis."

Obama, who withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011, said the United States would significantly increase support for Iraq's beleaguered security forces. But he stopped short of acceding to Baghdad's request for the immediate use of U.S. air power to fend off insurgents who have overrun northern Iraq.

The contingent of up to 300 military advisers will be made up of special forces and will staff joint operations centers for intelligence sharing and planning, U.S. officials said.

Leading U.S. lawmakers have called for Maliki to step down, and Obama aides have also made clear their frustration with him. Some U.S. officials believe there is a need for new Iraqi leadership but are mindful that Washington may not have enough clout to influence the situation, a former senior administration official said.

While Obama did not join calls for Maliki to go, saying "it's not our job to choose Iraq's leaders," he avoided any expression of confidence in the embattled Iraqi prime minister when asked by a reporter whether he would do so.

And in an apparent warning to Maliki, Obama said "only leaders with an inclusive agenda are going to be able to truly bring the Iraqi people together to help them through this crisis."

Obama's decision to dispatch military advisers and deepen U.S. re-enagagement in Iraq came after days of difficult deliberations for a president who won the White House in 2008 on a pledge to disentangle the United States from the long, unpopular war there. He said on Thursday that recent days had reminded Americans of the "deep scars" from its Iraq experience.

REFINERY BECOMES BATTLEGROUND

Even as Obama announced his most significant response to the Iraqi crisis, the sprawling Baiji refinery, 200 km (130 miles) north of the capital near Tikrit, was transformed into a battlefield.

Troops loyal to the Shi'ite-led government held off insurgents from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and its allies who had stormed the perimeter a day earlier, threatening national energy supplies.

A government spokesman said around noon (0900 GMT) that its forces were in "complete control."

But a witness in Baiji said fighting was continuing. Two Iraqi helicopters tried to land in the refinery but were unable to because of insurgent gunfire, and most of the refinery remained under rebel control.

A day after the government publicly appealed for U.S. air power, Obama's decision to hold off for now on such strikes underscored skepticism in Washington over whether they would be effective, given the risk of civilian deaths that could further enrage Iraq's once-dominant Sunni minority.

"We will be prepared to take targeted and precise military action if we conclude the situation on the ground requires it," Obama said. But he insisted that any U.S. military response would not be in support of one Iraqi sect over another.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, a NATO ally, said the United States "does not view such attacks positively," given the risk to civilians. A Saudi source said that Western powers agreed with Riyadh, the main Sunni state in the region, that what was needed was political change, not outside intervention, to heal sectarian division that has widened under Maliki.

A senior member of Maliki's State of Law list suggested immediate U.S. military action was no longer necessary because defenses in the capital Baghdad have been strengthened and the new advisers will make it easier to bomb in the future if needed.

"Once they are down there, they will be able to do targeting," the politician said, suggesting that Iraqi security forces have "bought time" by toughening their resistance to the insurgent advance.

But Obama's announcement drew criticism from some Republican opponents.

Congressman Edward Royce, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs committee, said "the steps he announced are needed but fall short of what is required to stop this al Qaeda offshoot from gaining more power, which must include drone strikes."

Video aired by Al-Arabiya television showed smoke billowing from the Baiji plant and the black flag used by ISIL flying from a building. Workers who had been inside the complex, which spreads for miles close to the Tigris River, said Sunni militants seemed to hold most of the compound in early morning and that security forces were concentrated around the refinery's control room.

The 250-300 remaining staff were evacuated early on Thursday, one of those workers said by telephone. Military helicopters had attacked militant positions overnight, he added.

Baiji, 40 km (25 miles) north of Saddam Hussein's home city of Tikrit, lies squarely in territory captured in the past week by an array of armed Sunni groups, spearheaded by ISIL, which is seeking a new Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria. On Tuesday, staff shut down the plant, which makes much of the fuel Iraqis in the north need for both transport and generating electricity.

ISIL'S ADVANCE

ISIL, which considers Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim majority as heretics in league with neighbouring Shi'ite Iran, has led a Sunni charge across northern Iraq after capturing the major city of Mosul last week as Maliki's U.S.-armed forces collapsed.

The group's advance has only been slowed by a regrouped military, Shi'ite militias and other volunteers. The government announced on Thursday that those who joined up to fight in "hot areas" would be paid about $150 a week.

ISIL, whose leader broke with al Qaeda after accusing the global jihadist movement of being too cautious, has now secured cities and territory in Iraq and Syria, in effect putting it well on the path to establishing its own well-armed enclave that Western countries fear could become a center for terrorism.

The Iraqi government made public on Wednesday its request for U.S. air strikes, 2-1/2 years after U.S. forces ended the nine-year occupation that began by toppling Saddam in 2003.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry played down the extent of possible cooperation with Iran, the main Shi'ite power, which backs Maliki, saying Washington wanted communication on Iraq with its old enemy to avoid "mistakes" but would not work closely with Tehran.

From Iran, which has pledged to intervene if necessary in Iraq to protect Shi'ite holy places, a tweet from an account linked to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei noted that Western powers support the mostly Sunni revolt against Syria's Iranian-backed leader. It called for Sunnis and Shi'ites to resist efforts by the militants and the West to divide Muslims.

A group of Islamist Sunni scholars led by the influential Qatar-based cleric Youssef al-Qaradawi called on Arab and Islamic states to protect Iraqi Sunnis, saying a "revolution" was "natural" because of the "great injustice" done to them.