UN puts sanctions focus on IS

The UN Security Council has put the global focus on cutting off the funds of the Islamic State.

The UN Security Council has warned that some countries are failing to implement long-standing sanctions against Islamic State.

It came as an unprecedented meeting of finance ministers put the global focus on cutting off the militant group's funds.

The 15-member council unanimously adopted a US and Russian-drafted resolution that ties together existing measures targeting Islamic State's finances and offers guidance on implementation in a bid to push more countries to act.

It builds on a Security Council action in February that banned trade in antiquities from Syria, threatened sanctions on anyone buying oil from Islamic State and al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front militants and urged states to stop kidnap ransom payments.

"This resolution is a critical step, but the real test will be determined by actions we each take after adoption," US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told the council after the vote.

The resolution "expresses concern about the lack of implementation" of previous resolutions targeting al Qaeda and Islamic State, including an "insufficient level of reporting" by states on measures they have taken to implement UN sanctions.

The council renamed its al Qaeda sanctions regime the "ISIL (Daesh) and al Qaeda Sanctions Committee" - Islamic State is also known as ISIL and Daesh - and called on states to report within 120 days on their implementation of sanctions.

"Unfortunately the obligations ... are not being implemented by all and everywhere," Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told the council, adding that "special responsibility for suppressing the channels for financing of ISIL unavoidably rests with states neighbouring on Iraq and Syria."

The council also specifically asked states to report on "interdictions in their territory of any oil, oil products, modular refineries, and related material being transferred to or from (Islamic State or Nusra Front)."

Lew, chair of Thursday's meeting because the United States is the council president for December, said Islamic State had reaped an estimated $US500 million ($A702.5 million) from black-market oil sales and "millions more from the people it brutalises and extorts".

Russia's Churkin said Islamic State also made $US250 million a year from the sale of phosphates, $US200 million from barley and rye and $US100 million from cement.

He said Islamic State leaders allocated $US30 million a month to buy weapons and ammunition, using shell companies in Eastern Europe.

Islamic State, which was blacklisted by the Security Council sanctions committee as an offshoot of al Qaeda in Iraq in May 2013, has seized swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria where it has proclaimed a caliphate.