Meeting on Isis without Russia, China, Iran would be incomplete

IT is not clear what the Trump administration hopes to achieve with the two-day meeting this week (March 22-23) on the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (Isis).

Some 68 nations and international organisations have been invited and it is being touted as a global coalition, led by Washington, to deny the militants their sources of fighters, weapons and funds.

To begin with, how different will it be from the coalition the US patched together in December 2014 in Brussels? That coalition in fact styled itself the Global Coalition to Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and settled on a plan to cut off its funding and provide military support to those forces engaged in fighting the militants.