U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday, February 2 said at a Rome-hosted meeting of the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State that the group must step up its efforts and prevent the militants from gaining a “stranglehold” in Libya, where it has become a growing threat, the New York Times reports.

“We’re still not at the victory that we want to achieve and will achieve in either Syria or Iraq, and we have seen Daesh playing a game of metastasizing out to other countries, particularly Libya,” Kerry said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

Opening a day of meetings devoted to planning the next stages of the battle against the Sunni extremist group, Kerry said the formation of a national unity government in Libya would prevent the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, from seizing control of the country.

Warning that the stakes were high, he said, “the last thing in the world you want is a false caliphate with access to billions of dollars of oil revenue.”

President Obama and top officials in his administration have been meeting to determine how the United States will expand its offensive against the Islamic State, he said, “and over time we will lay that out.”

Kerry also used the session, co-hosted by Italy and attended by 21 other nations participating in the coalition, to plead for more financial help to stabilize newly liberated areas of Iraq and for a strong international effort to address the humanitarian crisis in Syria, the NY Times says.

“The situation on the ground for the Syrian people is unfathomable – we haven’t seen a catastrophe like this since World War II, and it’s unfolding before our eyes,” Mr. Kerry said.