Kerry in Baghdad on mission to shore up Iraq

US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Baghdad today on a mission to push for Iraqi unity and stability to confront a militant offensive threatening to tear the country apart.

Flying in from Jordan on a visit which the State Department had sought to keep secret amid security concerns, Kerry was to meet with beleaguered Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and "Iraqi leaders from across the political spectrum," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Last week President Barack Obama announced that he was sending up to 300 military advisors to assist the Iraqi security forces, which are battling militants led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and was considering ordering up air strikes.

Kerry "will discuss US actions underway to assist Iraq as it confronts this threat from ISIL and urge Iraqi leaders to move forward as quickly as possible with its government formation process to forge a government," Psaki said.

The trip comes a day after Kerry hinted Washington's support for the Shiite premier Maliki was waning even though he insisted the US was not "picking and choosing" Iraq's leaders.

"The United States would like to see the Iraqi people find leadership that is prepared to represent all of the people of Iraq," Kerry told reporters in Cairo yesterday at the end of a surprise visit to Egypt.

He noted that minority Kurds and Sunni Arabs, and even some within Maliki's own Shiite community, had voiced dissatisfaction with the premier's leadership, and said the government had to "rise above sectarian motivations".

The Iraqi government has "to be inclusive and share power in a way that will maximise the ability of Iraq to focus on the real danger at this moment from an external source, which is ISIL," Kerry insisted.

A top US official who has been on the ground in Iraq told reporters that there was "a lot of anxiety and a lot of looking to the US for help".

Kerry's message to Iraqi leaders would be that even though US troops withdrew in 2011, Washington had the "highest level of commitment to Iraq," he said.

He would also do "person-to-person diplomacy with the key leaders and the key blocs as they work towards forming a new government along the constitutional timeline," the official added. Kerry also has back-to-back meetings in Brussels and Paris with NATO and Gulf allies later in the week.

The top US diplomat called on all of Iraq's neighbours to urge Iraqis "to form a government that is united in its determination to meet the needs and speak to the demands of all of their people.