French president to visit Moscow for terrorism talks

Russia carried out heavy raids in Syria’s northern Latakia province on Wednesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said, in the same area where Turkey downed the Russian fighter.

“We need to take the lead so that there can be actions against terrorism that must be intensified”, Hollande told Putin at the start of their talks at the Kremlin.

“What we agreed with Putin, and it’s very important, is to strike the terrorists and only IS and the jihadist groups, not the groups fighting them”, Hollande said, referring to Islamic State by its acronym.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s fate should be decided by the people in his country.

The Islamic State group, which controls large parts of Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for the November 13 coordinated gun and bomb attacks in Paris, which killed 130 people.

A few hours before the talks in Moscow got underway Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said his country was planning on drawing up formal sanctions against Turkey because its jet was shot down under circumstances it does not accept. Russia denies Turkish claims that the plane violated its airspace.

As if to underscore their frustration with Moscow, Obama and Hollande played down the biggest news of the day – Turkey’s downing of a Russian warplane- and instead chided Russia for impeding progress toward a political settlement to the Syrian conflict.

The Russian president insisted all flight information was provided by Russia to the coalition in advance, and “the USA side who leads the coalition knew about the place and time of stay of the Russian aircraft during its flight”. They will include “restrictions and bans on Turkish economic structures operating in Russian territory, restrictions and bans on deliveries of products, including foodstuffs”, as well as on labor and services.

“I ‘m in Moscow with you to determine how we can act collectively in order to coordinate our actions to strike this terrorist group and look for political solutions for Syria”, Hollande said at a joint press conference before entering private discussions with Putin.

In Berlin, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said Germany would send 650 soldiers to Mali to provide some relief to French forces fighting militants there.

US President Barack Obama on Monday hailed an unprecedented opportunity to end the four-year war in Syria and destroy the jihadist “face of evil” at a global summit held in the shadow of the Paris attacks.

France has limited capability to attack Islamic State in Syria and has desperately appealed for help from its European allies, but received only token support.

Cavusoglu said after talks Thursday with breakaway Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci that “we don’t want this incident to affect our relations with Russian Federation”.

“We made a decision to scale up our strikes both in Syria and Iraq, to broaden their scope and to strengthen intelligence sharing”, Hollande said.

Russian Federation has been Assad’s staunchest ally, and has come under criticism for targeting some rebel groups who are fighting against both IS and Assad in Syria’s multifaceted and complex civil war.

He said countries bordering Syria such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan “are already bearing an extraordinary burden” from the flow of refugees and “cannot be expected to do so alone”.

Russian Federation will “organise additional checks at the border and at food production sites in Turkey”, he said.

Presidential candidate Jeb Bush on Wednesday blasted the White House’s approach to combating ISIS, calling on President Obama to “unleash the military” to battle the Middle East militants.

French and U.S. warplanes are focusing their bombing campaign on Islamic State.