Bharat Rakshak

Russia is ready to sell civil airliners to Iraq and keep providing it with military aid to fight Islamic State, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Thursday, accompanied on a trip to Baghdad by the biggest Russian delegation in years.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said discussions had revolved around providing military assistance to defeat Islamic State militants, also known as Daesh, who seized a third of Iraq in 2014 and want to redraw the map of the Middle East.
"We need support, training and intelligence-sharing," he told reporters. "Intelligence plays an important role in the war on Daesh, and we've been coordinating for a while now with the Russian side to place this information in the hands of Iraqis."
Russia has invested millions of dollars in Iraq's energy sector and last year opened a command center in Baghdad under an intelligence-sharing agreement with Iraq, Iran and Syria aimed at combating Islamic State.
Rogozin said he had met with his country's envoy to the command center, thought to be a one-star general. He said through a translator that Moscow would continue providing Iraq with military equipment which had helped "raise the combat readiness of the Iraqi armed forces", but provided few details.
He told Russian news agency TASS he hoped military aid would help Iraq retake the northern city of Mosul and other areas held by Islamic State.
Frustrated with the pace and depth of the U.S.-led military campaign against the militants, Iraqi officials have said they would lean heavily on Russia in the struggle to defeat the Sunni Muslim jihadists. The command center has shared intelligence for air strikes in Iraq and neighboring Syria.

Baghdad has said the fight to retake Mosul will happen this year, although U.S. Marine Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee the city will not be recaptured in 2016.