WASHINGTON _ The United States will host the first major meeting since 2014 of a 68-nation coalition formed to fight Islamic State, administration officials announced Thursday.
The conference is set for March 22-23, and the U.S. contingent will be led by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in a rare high-profile role.
The meeting will underscore that the U.S. considers "the complete defeat" of Islamic State its "top priority in the Middle East," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in making the announcement.
Most nations will be represented by their foreign ministers, as well as some military commanders, Toner said.
"It's an opportunity for Secretary Tillerson to lay out the challenges that are facing the coalition moving forward," he said.
Toner said there has been progress in beating back Islamic State on the ground by recapturing most of Mosul in Iraq and reducing the group's territory in Syria. But there are new "battlefields," he said, such as the internet, where Islamic State frequently recruits, indoctrinates and strategizes.
"How do we leverage that success? How do we build on that success?" Toner said.
Russia will not participate in the conference, Toner said, even though it is a leading fighting force in Syria, where it backs the regime of President Bashar Assad in that country's civil war, the region's other major conflict.
Toner denied that the U.S. was losing its focus on the Syrian conflict in the pursuit of Islamic State, but he characterized the latter fight as the prelude to stability in the region.
The State Department said this will be the first meeting of the full coalition since December 2014, shortly after it was formed.
