The US and its coalition partners are "increasing the pace" of actions against the Islamic State, says John Kerry.
The US and its coalition partners are "increasing the pace" of actions against the Islamic State as the terror outfit has become an overt threat to American interests and law-abiding people, Secretary of State John Kerry has said.
"Daesh (another name for the Islamic State) has become an overt, declared threat to the interests of the United States and to law-abiding men and women across the globe," Mr Kerry said in his keynote address at the Brooking Institute's Saban Forum in Washington.
"And their aggression has fuelled a refugee crisis that is placing an extraordinary burden on our friends in Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, and now all of Europe with a profound impact on Europe itself," he said.
In recent weeks, Mr Kerry noted, in Paris, Egypt, Beirut, and elsewhere there is evidence of the terror group's desire to carry out and inspire murderous acts wherever they can.
"That is why President Obama at the very outset, folks, the moment we saw what Daesh was doing and how they were moving and coming into Iraq, he declared that we must defeat Daesh. And that is why we are now increasing the pace of doing so," the top American diplomat said.
President Obama has defined three missions to achieve this goals, he noted.
The first is to mobilise our partners to accelerate and broaden the international campaign to defeat the terror group.
The second is to work diplomatically to bring an end to the Syrian civil war, because every single country consistently from the beginning of the Syrian revolution has said there is no military solution to this, it has to be a political one, Mr Kerry said.
And the third leg of the strategy, or pillar, is to ensure that the instability created by the war in Syria does not spread further beyond its borders, he said.
Noting that the urgency of defeating the terror group cannot be overstated, Mr Kerry said the Islamic State are a mixture of killers and kidnappers, smugglers, thieves, and apostates who have hijacked a religion and combined a medieval thinking with modern weapons to wage an especially savage brand of war.
"They butcher teachers, burn books, shut schools, destroy ancient sacred places including the tombs of the prophets Jonah and Daniel," he said.