ELMAU, Germany: Acknowledging military setbacks, President Barack Obama said Monday the U.S. still lacks a “complete strategy” for training Iraqi forces to fight the ISIS. He urged Iraq’s government to allow more of the nation’s Sunnis to join the campaign against the jihadi militants. Nearly a year after U.S. troops started returning to Iraq to assist local forces, Obama said ISIS remains “nimble, aggressive and opportunistic.” He touted “significant progress” in areas where the U.S. has trained Iraqis to fight but said forces without U.S. assistance are often ill-equipped and suffer from poor morale.

ISIS fighters captured the key Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi last month, prompting Defense Secretary Ash Carter to lament that Iraqi troops lacked “the will to fight.” That was a strikingly negative assessment of a military that has been the beneficiary of billions in U.S. assistance dating back to the war started during the administration of U.S. President George. W. Bush in 2003.

Still, Obama indicated that simply increasing the number of Americans in Iraq would not resolve the country’s issues. The U.S. currently has about 3,000 troops there for train-and-assist missions.

“We’ve got more training capacity than we have recruits,” he said at the close of a two-day Group of Seven meeting at a luxury resort tucked in the Bavarian Alps.

G-7 leaders invited Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to join them Monday for talks on the security situation in the Middle East. Obama and Abadi also met one-on-one shortly before the president departed for Washington.

In both public and private, Obama urged Abadi and his Shiite-led government to allow more Sunnis to fight ISIS. The White House has long blamed Iraq’s sectarian divisions for stoking the kind of instability that allowed the militants to thrive.

In Washington, the highest-ranking Sunni in Iraq’s government said Sunni tribes are still receiving insufficient training and inferior weapons compared to the national army. Parliament Speaker Salim al-Jabouri put the onus for fixing that on Baghdad, saying it should provide clear assurances that the tribes will receive the necessary weapons.

“Guarantees create confidence, and we need confidence,” he said.

An early opponent of Bush’s war in Iraq, Obama withdrew U.S. forces in late 2011 and has vowed he won’t send Americans back into combat there. The U.S., along with coalition partners, is launching air raids in both Iraq and Syria, but is banking on local ground forces to supplement that effort.A six-week U.S. combat training course instructs Iraqi forces on how to shoot, communicate and move about on the battlefield. They are also given individual military equipment.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters Monday that the U.S. wants to be able to increase the number of Iraqi troops being trained, but to do that the Iraq government has to increase the number of troops it provides. As of June 4, the U.S. had trained 8,920 Iraqi troops at the four sites, and 2,601 more are undergoing training, Warren said.

Beyond Iraq’s sectarian divisions, senior defense officials said, training is hindered because Iraqi security forces have difficulty getting to training sites. Not only are they consumed with fighting, but there are also risks in the travel itself, from ISIS fighters to roadside bombs and blocked roads.

Some Republicans in the U.S. say ISIS’ strength is due to what they see as Obama’s muddled and ineffective strategy. The president was criticized in August for saying the U.S. didn’t have an overall strategy for fighting the ISIS, and his comments Monday about plans for training Iraqis sounded similar.

“We aren’t winning the fight against ISIS because we don’t have a winning plan,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said. “The president can’t delay anymore, especially as ISIS continues to make major gains.”