Kerry meets with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad as U.S. military advisers move into place

BAGHDAD - U.S. military advisers began moving into position Monday, hours after Washington and Baghdad signed an immunity agreement, as Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States would protect its national security interests even if Iraqis could not bridge their widening sectarian and political divides.

"If there is evidence that requires some kind of action" before Iraq forms a new government, President Obama "maintains the prerogative of making that decision," Kerry said, following crisis talks here with Iraqi leaders.

As it prepares for possible U.S. air attacks against Sunni militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the administration has left open the door for strikes on both sides of the border.

Senior officials in Washington have refused to rule out strikes against ISIS forces in Syria as well as Iraq and have said that the administration's goal is to preserve some flexibility while awaiting assessments from the newly positioned U.S. military advisers.

Kerry arrived here as ISIS forces captured a border crossing between Iraq and Jordan late Sunday, following their takeover of three more towns in western Iraq's Anbar province over the weekend. The militants have continued a rapid offensive that seeks to erase the border between Iraq and Syria and dissolve modern Iraq.

The Obama administration is committed under existing strategic agreements to helping Iraq, Kerry said at a news conference after meetings with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, and leading Sunni and Kurdish officials.

But he repeated Obama's insistence that only the rapid resolution of Iraq's sectarian divide, with the formation of a new government, offers a chance of stability. "Iraq faces an existential threat, and Iraq's leaders have to meet that threat with the incredible urgency that it demands," Kerry said.

"The very future of Iraq depends on choices that will be made in the next days and weeks," he said. "And the future of Iraq depends primarily on the ability of Iraq's leaders to come together and take a united stand . . . not next week, not next month, but now."

In the meantime, he said, "President Obama has stated repeatedly that he will do what is necessary and what is in our national interest to confront [ISIS] and the threat that it poses to the security of the region and to our security in the long run."

"None of us should have to be reminded that a threat left unattended far beyond our shores can have grave, tragic consequences."

Maliki, who has largely defined himself as a nationalist unwilling to take orders from the United States, has asked for air strikes to stop the rebels' march toward Baghdad.

If Obama does decide to move against ISIS, it will be in defense of American, regional, and Iraqi interests and not in support of any individual Iraqi leader, Kerry said.

Iraq has had a caretaker government since parliamentary elections this spring. Kerry implored political leaders to quickly form a new government, a process that in the past has involved months of horse-trading.