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Americans and Turks Discuss ISIS Threat 

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Shiite militiamen clashed with members of the Islamic State in Fallujah, Iraq. Turkey wants to clear ISIS from its southern border. Hadi Mizban/Associated Press 
WASHINGTON — American and Turkish officials are discussing a joint effort to clear Islamic State fighters away from Turkey’s southern border, a senior State Department official said on Monday.
The official did not provide details or explain what role American air power might play, but he said that discussions with Turkish officials had progressed after several rocky months. “We are looking for things we can do in a very material and tangible way,” the official said. “We want to get those extremists off their border. We want to look at a way that we can do that cooperatively with them.”
Senior officials from the United States-led coalition that is fighting the Islamic State group are scheduled to meet in Paris on Tuesday to coordinate their campaign. The meeting has taken on added importance since the Islamic State took Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province in Iraq, last month, and the group has continued to make gains in Syria.
While Obama administration officials have cast the loss of Ramadi as a temporary reversal, the defeat was widely seen as a major setback for the administration’s campaign to degrade and eventually defeat the extremist group, which has proclaimed a caliphate in much of Syria and Iraq.

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Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq, who will attend Tuesday’s meeting, is expected to ask for additional support for his plan to retake Ramadi, which includes mobilizing more Sunni tribal fighters and recruiting new soldiers.
Laurent Fabius, France’s foreign minister, said last week that in Iraq and Syria “international mobilization must be strengthened very quickly, or else we are heading toward the division of one or the other country, if not both, with new massacres and dangerous consequences.”
But it is not yet clear how far the United States and its partners are prepared to go to help the Iraqis. The Obama administration has not indicated, for example, that it is willing to send small American teams onto the battlefield to call in airstrikes.
In a briefing for reporters, given on the condition of anonymity, the State Department official said that the United States would support Mr. Abadi’s efforts to recruit more tribal fighters. “They need help, and we’re ready to help,” he said. “We have about 5,000 now enrolled in Anbar Province, and that number is going to keep going up.”
The United States has sent 2,000 antitank weapons to help the Iraqis defend themselves against suicide vehicles. The coalition has already trained 7,000 Iraqi soldiers and is in the process of training 4,000 more, the State Department official said.
The coalition is also expected to support Mr. Abadi’s plan to bring new recruits into the Iraqi Army and rebuild the Iraqi police. After the Islamic State took Ramadi, Mr. Abadi fired the head of the Anbar police. Those officers are supposed to help secure towns and cities that the Iraqi government hopes to free from the control of the Islamic State.
Secretary of State John Kerry had planned to address the session, but after breaking his leg in a cycling accident on Sunday in France, Deputy Secretary Antony J. Blinken will attend in his place. (Mr. Kerry flew on Monday with his personal physician to Boston, where he will receive additional medical care.)
The meeting will include more than 20 nations and organization of the 62-member coalition.
Even as the diplomats gathered in Paris, the Islamic State stepped up its attacks. On Monday, three of its suicide bombers attacked a police base north of Ramadi in captured Humvees filled with explosives, reportedly killing more than 40 officers and Shiite militiamen.
Though both members of the coalition against the Islamic State, the United States and Turkey have been at odds on some important issues on how to deal with the conflict in Syria. Turkey, which is contending with a flood of Syrian refugees and wants to topple Bashar al-Assad, called last year for establishing a large buffer zone within Syria.
Mr. Kerry said in October that the idea was “worth looking at very, very closely.” But Josh Earnest, the White House spokesman, insisted at the time that the idea was not under consideration.
With no agreement on Syria, the United States has not been able to conduct airstrikes from its air base at Incirlik, Turkey. Efforts to stem the flow of volunteers and supplies for extremists groups that are fighting the Assad government, much of which has entered Syria from Turkish territory, have also fallen short.
Though the State Department official declined to provide details, he appeared to be alluding to a much more modest approach than the establishment of a large buffer zone or an extensive no-fly zone.
Any agreement on a plan, he said, would not come before the June 7 parliamentary elections in Turkey.