Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called for an international conference on terrorism and said his country needs U.S. expertise and support to defeat al-Qaeda attacks that are hampering economic development

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called for an international conference on terrorism and said his country needs U.S. expertise and support to defeat al-Qaeda attacks that are hampering economic development.

During a visit to Washington that includes a meeting tomorrow with President Barack Obama, Maliki said: “We could have defeated al-Qaeda completely had the situation not deteriorated in Syria and Libya.” “Extremism developed. Sectarianism developed,” Maliki said at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a federally funded organization created by Congress in 1984 to promote peaceful resolutions of conflicts.

"We know we have major challenges of our own capabilities being up to the standard. They currently are not," Lukman Faily, the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S., told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday. "We need to gear up, to deal with that threat more seriously. We need support and we need help."

He added, "We have said to the Americans we'd be more than happy to discuss all the options short of boots on the ground."

The ambassador said no new security agreement would be needed to give immunity to additional U.S. advisers or trainers in Iraq - the main sticking point that led to U.S. withdrawal. And he said Iraq would pay for the additional weapons or other assistance.

A senior Obama administration official said Wednesday that U.S. officials were not planning to send U.S. trainers to Iraq and that Baghdad had not asked for them.