Obama to discuss Islamic State at CIA next week

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will convene a meeting of his National Security Council next week at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters to review the fight against Islamic State militants, the White House said on Friday.

The meeting, to be held on Wednesday, comes as the administration weighs a plan to increase the number of U.S. special operations forces deployed to Syria to try to advance recent gains against Islamic State.

The top U.S. general, Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said he is working on options to present to Obama to increase U.S. forces in Iraq to bolster Iraqi forces preparing for a major offensive against the militant group in Mosul.

Obama has held similar meetings, at the Pentagon and at the State Department, on fighting Islamic State, which holds areas of Syria and Iraq.

"There's no particular operational reason for him having it there," White House spokeswoman Jen Friedman told reporters. "It's just the next in a series of these meetings."

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton Writing by Timothy Gardner; Editing by James Dalgleish)

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