Cautioning against the possible global repercussions of the extremist group Islamic State, Australian PM Tony Abbott has described the ISIS as a “death cult” with far-reaching tentacles and urged more than 20 Asia Pacific nations to fight to check the group’s advance.
Speaking at regional Countering Violent Extremism summit in Sydney, PM Abbott made it clear that there was no other alternative other than to fight the ISIS as negotiating with them was not an option.
The two day summit is being attended by leaders, officials and experts from 27 nations and also by executives from social media firms like Twitter, Facebook and Google.
“Daesh [IS] is coming, if it can, for every person and for every government with a simple message: ‘Submit or die’. You can’t negotiate with an entity like this, you can only fight it,” the BBC quoted him as speaking in his opening remarks.
Even US President Barack Obama, this year in a meeting with Dalai Lama, had called the ISIS as a “death cult” that committed barbaric acts.
Abbott further said that ISIS was not a local terrorist group but an organisation with “global ambitions”.
Abbott also stressed on the urgency to stop young minds from veering to the ISIS as it was a “misguided and wrong-headed way to express their desire to sacrifice”.
Last month Abbott had said “at least 250 Australians, some of them quite young, have become ensnared in the evil ideology of the IS death cult”.
As ISIS continues to advance and pose dangers, Australia has taken a host of security measures to stem the flow of citizens to Syria. The measures include stripping Australian citizenship of those who are found to have been supporting extremists and prosecute those who have returned or are wanting to.
Australia has also criminalised travel to terrorism spots and several arrests have been made across the country, especially in Melbourne, where they were charged with staging terrorist attacks on policemen.
Abbott`s comments come after the US yesterday announced it was sending more troops to Iraq to train their military forces fighting Islamic State (IS) militants.
