Iraq's parliament was to meet yesterday under pressure to approve an inclusive government to win broad support against jihadists, as President Barack Obama prepares to unveil a strategy to defeat them.

The outgoing government has faced criticism that by alienating the Sunni Arab minority, it helped create conditions that revitalised Sunni militants including the Islamic State group, which led a June offensive that seized much of the Sunni heartland.

Washington and the United Nations have repeatedly called on premier-designate Haidar al-Abadi to form a broad-based government.

Giving Sunnis a greater stake in

awaited strategy tomorrow to tackle IS in both Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

"We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities. We're going to shrink the territory that they control. And ultimately we're going to defeat them, ’ Obama said in an interview aired Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press".

He said he would not announce the return of US ground troops to Iraq and would focus instead on a “counter-terrorism campaign “.

But the difficulties Washington faces were underlined by a report from a Britain-

based research group which found that IS fighters were using captured US military-issue weapons supplied to other rebel groups in Syria by Saudi Arabia.

power could help encourage them to join a counter-offensive against the jihadists.

The key parliament session was due to open at 1700 GMT and end with a vote on a new government line-up.

There has been no word from Abadi's office on the names to be put to lawmakers, and the political horse-trading was expected to go down to the wire.

Obama, who made his political career opposing the war in Iraq and pulled out US troops in 2011, promised to unveil a long-

The issue of Kurdish participation in the government is perhaps the biggest potential sticking point, and their delegation flew from Baghdad to the city of Sulaimaniyah in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region yesterday to discuss the issue with senior political leaders.

With Shiite militiamen playing a key role alongside the regular army in fighting the jihadists, one of their commanders is apparently seeking to turn military gains into political capital, which could complicate efforts to bring Sunnis on board.