Paris Assaults: Obama, Hollande to Meet to Discuss War on ISIS

French President Francois Hollande will arrive in Washington Tuesday to deliver a message to President Obama about the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS): This is an emergency.

But Mr Hollande is likely to leave Washington without firm backing for his call to bring Russian Federation into a new coalition to fight the extremists.

Hollande’s visit to Washington is part of a diplomatic offensive to strengthen the anti-Islamic State group campaign.

Hollande met with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday and will meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday. Earnest discussed the Islamic State group, the attacks in Paris, and other topics.

Hollande is scheduled to meet president Obama at the White House on Tuesday morning. After the USA, he heads next to Moscow.

The White House has not ruled out greater cooperation with Russian Federation, but has expressed skepticism that Putin will focus the fight on the common enemy rather than use its airstrikes to undermine the moderate forces fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad.

In addition to airstrikes, the coalition is attempting to train and equip local forces, and the U.S.is set to deploy approximately 50 special forces to Syria to help in that effort very soon. But his office acknowledges that “coordination” sounds like a far more realistic goal.

Hollande is slated to travel to Moscow later in the week for meetings with Putin.

The “foreign minister of Bahrain and senior diplomats from France, Iraq, Italy, Lebanon and Turkey discussed their strong commitment to the coalition and briefed the [group] on coalition efforts, including ongoing support for stabilization operations in Iraq, enhancing humanitarian aid and increasing information sharing to counter foreign fighter flows and cut off ISIL revenues”, the department said. The US and France support a transition that would lead to the departure of Assad, who has overseen a civil war in his country that created a vacuum for the Islamic State group to thrive.

The White House reiterated that criticism on Monday with Earnest noting that Russian Federation continues to undermine worldwide efforts to reach a political settlement in Syria by “propping up” the regime of Assad.

The U.S.-led coalition has targeted oil infrastructure occasionally in the past, including a heavy attack last month on Syria’s Omar field near the town of Deir el-Zour that hit refineries, command and control centers and transportation nodes.

“I don’t think the approach is sufficient to the job”, Feinstein said on CBS’ “Face the Nation”.