NEW YORK: President Barack Obama has said he may support a sustained effort to drive Sunni militants out of Iraq, provided Iraqi leaders form a more “inclusive government”.

In an interview with Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times, he said his administration would not allow the Islamic State (IS) militants to set up a “caliphate” in the Middle East.

“We’re not going to let them create some caliphate through Syria and Iraq,” he remarked. “But we can only do that if we know that we have got partners on the ground who are capable of filling the void.”

US urges Iraqi leaders to form a “more inclusive” govt

President Obama said he authorised air strikes in Iraq after concluding that the United States needed to protect Kurdish regions in the north of the country and “bolster” an Iraqi leadership that was panicking in the face of advances made by the IS.

Mr Obama said he was confident that the Iraqi leaders understood that “cavalry is not coming to the rescue” with ground forces.

He insisted that the United States had a “strategic interest in pushing back” IS, suggesting a broader mission than the one he described in a White House address earlier: to protect American personnel and prevent mass killings of Iraqi religious minorities.

The American president also offered justifications for authorising air strikes in Iraq but lamented the outcome of a similar decision he made in 2011 with regard to Libya.

He defended his desire to help oust Col Muammar Qadhafi with American firepower but acknowledged that he had “underestimated” the chaos that would follow after the US forces left.

“So that’s a lesson that I now apply every time I ask the question, ‘Should we intervene militarily’.”

Turning to the ongoing war in Gaza, Mr Obama said “neither Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have the political will to come to terms on a lasting peace agreement”.