Ready to jointly combat terrorism in Middle East: Saudi minister

Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal has said the US and Arab allies were ready for a unified vision to combat terrorism through all means.

"Today's meeting was a good opportunity for us to discuss the phenomenon from different aspects, and probe its roots and causes in-depth, and we expressed keenness to come out with an unified vision on how to combat it militarily, security and intelligencewise, economically, politically and intellectually," Saudi Press Agency quoted Prince Saud as saying Thursday in a joint conference held after a meeting in Jeddah.

The regional meeting to formulate a strategy to counter terrorism was attended by foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey as also US Secretary of State John Kerry.

The GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The minister said that any security move against terror should be accompanied by efforts like cutting financing and the flow of weapons to militant groups, adding that the participants in the meeting were keen to deal with terrorism strategically and comprehensively that is not confined to a single country.

He highlighted the spread of Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in Iraq and Syria, enabling the Sunni militant group to move freely into the Syrian territories with all its forces and equipment using the place as a safe haven when trying to evade heavy shelling in Iraq.

Prince Saud also said that Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud saw the IS threat coming a long time ago and had warned about the threat imposed by it in the region.

"It is shameful that those terrorists are doing this in the name of our religion, killing innocent people, mutilating their dead bodies and speaking proudly for this in the name of the religion which is innocent, thus defaming the profile of Islam, which in fact a pure, human and correct religion," the Saudi king had said in August last year.

Prince Saud said the meeting discussed the instable political situations in some countries where terrorism was rearing its head, a matter that necessitated intensifying political efforts to rectify the situations in those countries so that their citizens could come together regardless of their religious sects and social ethnicity.

He also lauded US President Barack Obama's call of action against terrorists in the region.