WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican-controlled House voted grudgingly to give the administration authority to train and arm Syrian rebels on Wednesday as President Barack Obama emphasized anew that American forces "do not and will not have a combat mission" in the struggle against Islamic State militants in either Iraq or Syria.

The 273-156 vote crossed party lines to an unusual degree in a Congress marked by near ceaseless partisanship. Top Republican and Democratic leaders backed Obama's plan seven weeks before midterm elections, while dozens of rank-and-file lawmakers in both parties opposed it.

The provision was added to spending legislation that will ensure the federal government operates normally after the Sept. 30 end of the budget year. Final approval is expected in the Senate as early as Thursday.

Even supporters of the military plan found little to trumpet. "This is the best of a long list of bad options," said Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va.

One Republican supporter noted the measure includes strict limits on Obama's authority. "Members on both sides of the aisle are very concerned that too much of Congress' warmaking power has gone to the president," said Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma.

Obama's remarks and similar comments Wednesday by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California seemed designed to reassure liberal lawmakers that the new military mission would be limited.

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Secretary of State John Kerry settles into his seat as he arrives to testify on Capitol Hill in Wash …

In a statement following the vote, Obama said the House "took an important step forward as our nation unites to confront the threat posed" by the Islamic State group, showing bipartisan support for a "critical component" of his strategy against the extremists.

Only a day earlier, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, drew widespread attention when he told Congress he might recommend the use of U.S. ground combat forces if Obama's current strategy fails to stop the militants.

Across the political aisle from the president and Pelosi, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California swung behind the plan. Yet many other Republicans expressed concerns that it would be insufficient to defeat militants who have overrun parts of Syria and Iraq and beheaded two American journalists.

In all, 85 Democrats and 71 Republicans voted to deny Obama the authority he sought. The measure passed on the strength of 159 votes from Republicans and 114 from Democrats.

GOP lawmakers took solace in the short-term nature of the legislation. It grants Obama authority only until Dec. 11, giving Congress plenty of time to return to the issue in a postelection session set to begin in mid-November.

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President Barack Obama speaks at US Central Command (CentCom) at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., Wedne …

While the military provision was given a separate vote in the House — to tack it onto the spending bill — it seemed unlikely there would be a yes-or-no vote in the Senate on Obama's new military strategy to train rebel forces in Saudi Arabia to be used in conjunction with potential U.S. airstrikes.

Instead, the Senate is likely to vote only once on the legislation that combines approval for arming and training rebels with the no-shutdown federal spending provisions.

Officials put a $500 million price tag on Obama's request to train and equip rebels. The cost generated virtually no discussion among lawmakers, who focused instead on the possible consequences of a new military mission not long after America ended participation in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Testifying before a Senate Committee, Secretary of State John Kerry said the forces seeking to create an Islamic state " must be defeated. Period. End of story."

There was little, if any dissent on that, but debate aplenty about the best way to accomplish it.

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President Barack Obama, center, with Sec. of Defense Chuck Hagel, left, and Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III …

"We simply don't know if somewhere down the line it will turn our guns back against us," said Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., giving voice to a fear that rebels seeking the removal of Syrian president Bashar Assad would eventually prove unreliable allies.

Republican Rep. Tom McClintock of California expressed a different concern. "Committing insufficient force in any conflict is self-defeating, and airstrikes alone cannot win a war," he said.

Dempsey's day-old remarks had staying power.

U.S. troops "will support Iraqi forces on the ground as they fight for their own country against these terrorists," Obama told officers in Florida at U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military efforts in the Middle East. He added, "As your commander in chief, I will not commit you and the rest of our armed forces to fighting another ground war in Iraq."

Vice President Joe Biden said in Iowa that Gen. Dempsey's "conclusion is that it is not needed now." Biden added: "We'll determine that based on how the effort goes."

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Secretary of State John Kerry points to a newspaper photo of the recent Arab summit in Saudi Arabia …

Pelosi said the House action "is not to be confused with any authorization to go further. ... I will not vote for combat troops to engage in war."

In Baghdad, Iraq's new prime minister told The Associated Press in an interview that his government wants no part of a U.S. ground combat mission. "Not only is it not necessary; we don't want them. We won't allow them," Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said.

The measure also renews the charter of the Export-Import Bank, which helps finance purchases of U.S. exports. That postpones until next June a battle between tea party forces opposing the bank and business-oriented Republicans who support it.

The legislation also includes $88 million to combat the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa.

The bill passed on a vote of 319-108.

______

Associated Press writers Jim Kuhnhenn in Tampa, Florida; Robert Burns in Paris; Vivian Salama and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad and Andrew Taylor, Alan Fram, and Erica Werner in Washington contributed to this story.

House votes to back Obama plan to fight IS group

The GOP-controlled House supports the military plan to train and arm Syrian rebels.
273-156 vote crosses party lines

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif addresses the media during a news conference in Vienna July 15, 2014.REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A diplomatic breakthrough is unlikely on a nuclear deal to end sanctions against Iran when talks resume in New York this week between Tehran and six world powers deadlocked after a year of negotiations.

The talks between Iran and the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China are re-starting after a two-month hiatus and amid Washington and Tehran ruling out cooperation on fighting Islamic State militants who have taken over swaths of Iraq and Syria.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will discuss the negotiations on a long-term nuclear deal over lunch on Thursday, diplomats said. The EU has been a kind of interlocutor for the six powers.

Diplomats from the six countries will begin meeting among themselves on Thursday before they all sit down with the Iranian delegation on Friday. The negotiations are expected to run until at least Sept. 26 on the sidelines of next week's annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly.

Ahead of the formal negotiations, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman - the number 2 and 3 diplomats at the State Department - will hold bilateral talks with Iranian officials on Thursday and Friday, the State Department said.

"The talks are going to be on the nuclear issue. At times other topics have come up on the sidelines, but that’s not the purpose or the intent, as is always the case," a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity about the bilateral talks.

U.S. and Iranian officials discussed the crisis in Iraq on the sidelines of the Vienna nuclear talks in June, though they have ruled out cooperating with each other on dealing with the threat posed by Islamic State in the region.

Sherman, who heads the U.S. delegation, said in a speech at Georgetown University on Tuesday that more movement from Iran will be needed to secure a long-term agreement.

"We can say on the positive side that our talks have been serious and that we have identified potential answers to some key questions," Sherman said. She also said "we remain far apart on other core issues, including the size and scope of Iran's uranium enrichment capacity."

Iran denies Western allegations that it is refining uranium to develop the capability to assemble nuclear weapons, saying it is doing it to help generate electricity.

The United States and its allies have in recent years imposed ever tighter financial and others sanctions on Iran, a major oil producer, to make it scale back its nuclear program.

CENTRIFUGE CAPACITY

Western governments want Iran to have a centrifuge capacity in the low, single-digit thousands so that it would take Tehran a long time to use the machines to purify enough uranium to fuel an atomic weapon. Tehran has rejected demands to significantly reduce the number below the more than 19,000 it has now installed, of which roughly half are operating.

Zarif, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, complained about what he described as unreasonable demands by Western powers in the nuclear talks but added that Tehran was committed to resolving the decade-long nuclear stand.

"We are committed to resolving this issue, we want to resolve this issue," he said, though he said later that Iran is "totally distrustful of the United States".

Iran, diplomats close to the talks said, appears unwilling to reduce the number of its centrifuges to below 10,000.

But that would be an unacceptable for the six powers, who diplomats say are aiming to have a deal in place that leaves Iran in a position where it would need at least one year to produce enough high enriched uranium for a single bomb - the so-called "breakout" capacity.

"On the question of enrichment we have practically made no progress," a senior Western diplomat said. "The six want that in case the agreement is broken and the nuclear activities restart towards a military objective, that we have a breakout capacity of a year."

Diplomats said a breakthrough in the New York negotiations was unlikely.

"Things remain blocked," the senior Western diplomat said. "New York will be vital to see if we can break the impasse."

Depending on how the negotiations among senior foreign ministry officials go in the coming days, another Western diplomat said foreign ministers might join the talks late next week "if good progress is being made or if there's a blockage."

Talks between Iran and the six were formally started during last year's General Assembly, when Zarif and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sat side-by-side during a special side meeting. Last November in Geneva, Iran and the six reached an interim agreement under which Tehran won some easing of sanctions in return for halting its most sensitive nuclear work.

But they failed to meet a July 20 target for a comprehensive agreement under which Iran would further curb its atomic activities in exchange for a gradual lifting of sanctions, and they set a new deadline of Nov. 24.

(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United Nations, Lesley Wroughton and Arshad Mohammed in Washington, Luke Baker in Jerusalem and John Irish in Paris; Editing by Grant McCool and Andrew Hay)

ABASSAN, Gaza Strip (AP) — The university student was desperate to flee Gaza after suffering through years of border closures and three wars.

In early September, a week after the latest war between Gaza's ruling Hamas and Israel, 22-year-old Mohammed Abu Toaimeh crossed into neighboring Egypt. He handed $2,000 to traffickers and boarded a ship that was to smuggle him to Europe.

Instead, he and dozens of other Gazans are missing amid reports that smugglers sank their vessel on purpose.

Mohammed's mother, Ahlam, is plagued by guilt because she helped him scrape together money for the trip. "I had hoped he could begin a new life, better than this life of war and destruction," she said in between sobs.

In the past two months, more than 1,300 Gazans are believed to have gone to Egypt, some even sneaking in through a border tunnel, to embark on illicit sea voyages, said Ramy Abdu, a human rights activist tracking the trafficking.

It's a new escape route and a measure of growing desperation in the crowded sliver of land where two-thirds of those under 30 are unemployed.

Dreams of emigration are common in Gaza, with polls regularly indicating more than 40 percent would leave if given a chance. Traditionally, young men in Gaza have been encouraged by their families to work abroad and send money home.

In recent years, some avenues of escape remained open, despite a border blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt after the Hamas militant group's takeover of Gaza in 2007.

Most would-be emigrants have flown to Europe or the Far East from Egypt, often on student or tourist visas, and then attempted to stay. Travel on migrant boats was unusual.

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In this Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014 photo, Palestinian Soad al-Jorf, 36, holds a photograph of her son H …

However, options diminished after Egypt's military toppled a Hamas-friendly government in Cairo in mid-2013. Egypt's new rulers sealed hundreds of smuggling tunnels under the border, cutting Gaza's main economic lifeline, and tightened travel restrictions. The restrictions sharply reduced the number of Gazans allowed to cross legally into Egypt and those who were permitted to fly from Cairo's airport.

The recent 50-day war only strengthened the belief of many here that they have no future in Gaza.

More than 2,100 Gazans were killed and more than 18,000 homes destroyed in the fighting. With Hamas sticking to its militant ideology, there are no signs that Israel and Egypt will ease the blockade significantly.

In mid-July, about a week after the outbreak of the war, a gang of Egyptian smugglers and Palestinian middlemen began advertising sea trips to Europe as cheap and safe, said Abdu.

Word of the boat trips quickly spread among the young men of Gaza, including Mohammed Abu Toaimeh, his 26-year-old brother Firas and their 19-year-old cousin, Hussein al-Jorf, who pleaded with their parents to raise the money.

There was little to keep the three in Gaza.

Mohammed and Hussein were studying law at a Gaza City university, with little prospect of employment after graduation.

Mohammed and Firas lived together in their family's old home, which during the war was seized by Israeli soldiers. Mohammed's bedroom had served as a sniper's position, with two holes cut into a wall at shoulder level and the words "west" and "southwest" scribbled in Hebrew next to them.

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In this Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014 photo, Palestinian Ahlam Abu Toaimeh, 47, holds a picture of her son …

In the end, Firas stayed in Gaza because his parents couldn't afford the voyage for both sons. Hussein left Gaza on Sept. 1 and Mohammed followed two days later.

Both entered Egypt legally via the Rafah border crossing with Gaza, after having obtained papers naming each as an escort for a parent seeking medical treatment in Egypt, the mother, Ahlam, explained.

She said she and Mohammed reached the port city of Alexandria after a nine-hour drive. There, they handed $2,000 to a smuggler who called himself "Abu Hamada, the Syrian" and put them up in an apartment along with six other migrants.

Ahlam, a 47-year-old mother of eight, said she last spoke to Mohammed by phone on Sept. 6 after a bus took him and Hussein to a waiting vessel.

The International Organization for Migration said the ship sailed from the Egyptian port of Damietta that day with about 500 Palestinians, Syrians, Egyptians and Sudanese on board, including about 100 children. Abdu said 120 Gaza natives were on the ship.

After four days at sea, smugglers intentionally rammed the vessel southeast of the island of Malta when the migrants refused to switch to a smaller boat they deemed unsafe, the migration organization said, citing survivor testimony.

The witnesses told the IOM that about 300 people on the lower deck were trapped and drowned immediately, while others held on to each other or flotation devices. The fate of Mohammed, Hussein and others from Gaza is unknown.

Zakariya Assouli, a Palestinian immigrant in Sweden, said his uncle, Shukri, was among the survivors and confirmed the boat was intentionally rammed.

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In this Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014 photo, Firas Abu Toaimeh, 26, holds a picture of his brother Mohamme …

Shukri Assouli was picked up by a freighter and flown to Greece, but his wife and two small children are missing, Zakariya said by phone.

He said his uncle had planned to join him in Sweden. "He was looking for a better future for him and his children," he said. He said he lost contact with the uncle after their conversation.

The number of migrants and refugees from Africa and the Middle East trying to get to Europe by boat is growing, and more than 110,000 have reached Italy alone so far this year, said Carlotta Sami, a spokeswoman for the Italy office of the main U.N. refugee agency. Newcomers often try to get from there to other European countries, she said.

Sami said she's seen an increase in the number of arrivals from Gaza over the past few weeks, but didn't have exact figures.

Maj. Gen. al-Anani Hammouda, security chief in the Egyptian coastal region of Marsa Matrouh, said the number of European-bound Palestinian migrants in his area has increased dramatically in recent weeks.

"We were used to migrants from African countries, Bangladesh, or Syrians. But over the past month, we have been seeing a large number of Palestinians among the migrants," he said.

On Sunday, 47 Palestinians were among more than 150 migrants caught in a fishing boat off Alexandria. Elsewhere, a Palestinian arrested in Alexandria on Saturday told authorities he had entered Egypt through a tunnel from Gaza.

In Gaza, a Hamas police spokesman said several suspected traffickers have been arrested.

Firas, the brother of Mohammed, said he expects the exodus to continue. "Even after the incident (with the capsized ship), everyone is eager to get out," he said.

While many leave through the Rafah crossing — either with medical referrals or by bribing Egyptian officials — more than 200 are believed to have left through a border tunnel, Abdu said.

Firas said a fake medical referral costs $400, while a trip through a tunnel costs an additional $1,800.

He said Abu Hamada told him that he can "connect us with people in Egypt to stamp our passports" in the event of the tunnel option.

Since the disappearance of his brother, Firas has put his emigration plans on hold to spare his mother more pain.

"It's enough that we lost one," he said.

___

Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank and Maggie Michael in Cairo contributed reporting.

By Jason Szep

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After about 15 hours of flying and five hours of meetings, sleep finally caught up with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Baghdad. It was 6:04 p.m.

After sinking into his seat at the center of the cavernous interior of a C-17 military transport plane, he cradled his head in his palm, put his feet on a desk and shut his eyes.

Visibly tired, too, were his retinue of aides as they took their seats, some clutching briefing papers with notes scribbled in the margin from meetings with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and the government he had formed a day earlier on Sept. 9.

Kerry’s exhaustion was understandable after nearly 24 hours of non-stop travel and meetings.

America’s fatigue in the Middle East could be a different story: the Iraqis who met Kerry may wonder if his boss, President Barack Obama, has the energy or stomach for what lies ahead in a country he has spent most of his nearly six years in office trying to leave behind.

The challenge is highlighted by a Reuters/Ipsos poll on Friday showing that while Americans support Obama's campaign of airstrikes against Islamic State militants, they have a low appetite for a long campaign against the group.

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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry wipes his eyes as he testifies at a Senate Foreign Relations Comm …

Several important tests loom for the U.S. administration's nascent coalition to “degrade and defeat” the ultra-hardline Islamic State whose militants have seized a third of both Iraq and Syria, declared war on the West and beheaded two American journalists and one British aid worker.

The complexity of eliminating Islamic State, which requires stabilizing Iraq, building up its armed forces and creating a western-backed rebel force in Syria, could take years, testing Obama's commitment and that of whoever succeeds him in 2017.

"There’s a real general distrust among our regional allies about our commitment to this because we've been missing in action for the last three years," said David Schenker, a specialist on Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former Pentagon adviser on Syria during President George W. Bush’s administration.

In Baghdad, Amman, Jeddah, Ankara, Cairo and Paris in the last week, Kerry laid plans for a U.S.-led coalition of regional and outside powers. It would hammer the black-clad fighters of Islamic State militarily, dry up its funding, eliminate its safe havens in Syria, block its ability to recruit fighters and try to extinguish its extremist ideology.

Kerry, who will report on his trip to Obama and Congress this week, insists this is different from past U.S. operations in the region.

"This is not the Gulf War of 1991," he told reporters in Paris on Monday.

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An Islamic State militant (L) stands next to residents as they hold pieces of wreckage from a Syrian …

"And it's not the Iraq War of 2003 ... We're not building a military coalition for an invasion. We're building a military coalition together with all the other pieces for a transformation, as well as for the elimination of ISIL itself," he said, invoking an acronym for the Islamic State group.

QUESTION OF COMMITMENT

World powers meeting in Paris on Monday gave a symbolic boost to that effort, publicly backing military action to fight Islamic State militants in Iraq.

France sent jets on a reconnaissance mission to Iraq, a step towards becoming the first ally to join the U.S.-led air campaign there and a senior U.S. official said some Arab countries had promised to take part.

On Friday, Kerry will chair a meeting of the U.N. Security Council in New York, which will provide countries which quietly backed the U.S. coalition an opportunity to do so publicly.

But questions remain over how far each will commit to a fight that U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Tuesday "will not be an easy or brief effort."

U.S. general says ground forces cannot be ruled ou …Play video

A 45-page State Department document detailed offers of assistance from about 40 countries, but these are mostly humanitarian. Military commitments are rare and small. Albania, for instance, plans to provide 22 million rounds of AK-47 bullets, 15,000 hand grenades and 32,000 artillery shells to Kurdish forces in Iraq.

U.S. fighter jets have conducted over 160 airstrikes on Islamic State positions in Iraq, resuming military action Obama and many Americans hoped were part of history when U.S. combat forces pulled out of the country in 2011.

The most senior U.S. military officer, General Martin Dempsey, raised the possibility on Tuesday that American troops might need to take on a larger role in Iraq's ground war, though Obama also ruled out a combat mission.

U.S. officials play down the prospect of imminent air attacks on the Islamist group's heartland in Syria and it remains unclear who, if anyone, would join them.

The United States will present a legal case before going into Syria, U.S. officials say, justifying strikes largely on the basis of defending Iraq from militants who threaten its sovereignty and have taken shelter in neighboring Syria during its three-year-old civil war.

"OVERALL COORDINATOR"

Entering Syrian airspace would deepen a conflict that already cuts across sectarian lines. Islamic State is made up of Sunni militants fighting a Shi'ite-led government in Iraq and a government in Syria led by members of a Shi'ite offshoot sect.

Briefing U.S. reporters in Paris, Kerry said there were "several discussions with foreign ministers" on how to defeat Islamic State inside Syria. He did not go into specifics, but he emphasized that it was not just about the airstrikes.

Kerry and his advisers often describe the anti-Islamic State campaign as "holistic". The approach was set out in a six-paragraph communique issued on Sept. 11 and signed by 10 Arab countries - Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and six Gulf states including rich rivals Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The Arab states agreed to eight main tasks: stopping the flow of foreign fighters, countering Islamic State financing, repudiating their ideology, ending impunity, providing humanitarian relief, reconstruction of Islamic State-hit areas, supporting states that face "acute" Islamic State threats, and, "as appropriate, joining in the many aspects of a coordinated military campaign."

The United States specifically wanted the words "as appropriate," one senior State Department official said.

"We wanted to be an overall coordinator of this effort," the official said. "So, ‘as appropriate’ means as part of an overall campaign plan, and as this continues to move forward."

(This story adds dropped word "State" in 25th paragraph)

(Reporting by Jason Szep; Editing by David Storey and Howard Goller)

By Maria Golovnina

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's South Asia wing has claimed responsibility for hijacking a Pakistani naval ship and trying to use it to fire rockets at U.S. vessels in the Arabian Sea, in the first major assault by the newly created group.

The SITE monitoring service quoted its spokesman, Usama Mahmoud, as saying a group of militants had succeeded in seizing control of the Pakistani frigate PNS Zulfiqar and tried to use it to attack nearby U.S. vessels.

"These mujahideen had taken control of the Pakistani ship, and they were advancing towards the American fleet when the Pakistani army stopped them," he said.

"As a result, the mujahideen, the lions of Allah and benefactors of the Ummah, sacrificed their lives for Allah, and the Pakistani soldiers spoiled their hereafter by giving up their lives in defense of the enemies of the Ummah the Americans."

SITE said Mahmoud's statement also provided a picture and a detailed layout of the PNS Zulfiqar.

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Pakistan Navy Zulfiqar-class frigate PNS Shamsheer docks at Port Sudan, in Sudan's Red Sea State, No …

The navy and the army's press wing were not immediately available for comment.

The naval yard on Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast is a strategically important facility at the center of U.S.-Pakistani security, anti-terrorism and anti-trafficking cooperation.

The foiled attack comes at a time when regional powers are already concerned about stability as U.S.-led forces continue to withdraw from neighboring Afghanistan, potentially creating a security gap for insurgents to exploit.

The attack, which lasted several hours, also shows just how much the Islamist militants are capable of striking at the heart of Pakistan's vast security apparatus and raises questions about the nuclear-armed nation's ability to guard its installations.

The Pakistani Taliban, closely allied with al Qaeda, had earlier said that the Sept. 6 attack was carried out with the help of insiders. Pakistan later arrested a number of navy personnel on suspicion of collaborating with the attackers.

Al Qaeda announced the formation of the new group on Sept. 4, with its chief, Ayman al-Zawahri, promising to spread Islamic rule and "raise the flag of jihad" across South Asia, home to more than 400 million Muslims.

Analysts say the move is part of al Qaeda's plan to take advantage of the planned withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from Afghanistan and boost its influence in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region as well as India.

It also comes against the backdrop of a full-scale operation launched by Pakistan's military against Taliban militants in the lawless region of North Waziristan following a deadly attack on the airport in the city of Karachi in June.

(Editing by Nick Macfie)