REPORT: Senate moves toward supporting US helicopters for Iraq

The U.S. Senate is looking more favorably at a request to provide attack helicopters to Iraq, but a top senator has not yet given the Obama administration a green light for military assistance that Iraq wants to help it rebuff an al Qaeda bid to seize a western province.    

Robert Menendez, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has held back on supporting the lease and sale of several dozen Apache helicopters to the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki without certain assurances.      

Menendez' concerns have centered around how Washington can ensure that security forces under Maliki, a Shi'ite increasingly at odds with minority Sunnis in Iraq, use the helicopters prudently. He is also concerned about whether officials are keeping Congress sufficiently informed about efforts to ensure Iraq doesn't permit Iran to ship weapons to Syria across Iraqi airspace.   

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner called for the Obama administration to do more to help Iraq battle insurgency but stopped short of calling for U.S. troops to return to Iraq.         

Two years after it pulled all U.S. troops from Iraq, the United States is working to speed up shipments of Hellfire  missiles, surveillance aircraft and other gear that Maliki has requested to help Iraqi forces rebuff the al Qaeda comeback in Anbar province, where the conflict in neighboring Syria appears to be feeding increased militant activity.   


REUTERS

To watch the full report, please click on the video above