Obama, Hollande call on Russian Federation to focus on Islamic State in Syria

Speaking at a news conference with French President Francois Hollande in Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama defended the right of Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member country, to defend itself. Obama expressed “US and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation support for Turkey’s right to defend its sovereignty”, the White House statement added.

“The problem from the coalition’s point of view is whether the information (Russia would share) is accurate”, Brynen said.

And that’s why, for more than a year, the United States, France and our coalition of some 60 nations have been united in one mission: “to defeat these ISIL terrorists and defeat their vile ideology”, Obama said. But he insisted a partnership is impossible as long as Russian Federation stands by Syrian President Bashar Assad, who is blamed by the US for plunging his country into chaos and creating the vacuum that allowed Islamic State to strengthen.

Just over 10 days after terrorist attacks in Paris killed 130 people, Hollande arrived in Washington seeking to stitch together a tighter alliance against the Islamic State, which has claimed responsibility.

Hollande said France was coordinating with Russian ships in the eastern Mediterranean since the French Charles De Gaulle aircraft carrier arrived in the region. He noted that France had come to American aid during the revolution, and America to France’s during the world wars.

“We can not succumb to fear”, Obama said after he discussed with Hollande on counter-IS efforts, “Make no mistake, we will win, and groups like ISIL will lose”.

“The Paris attacks generated a lot of emotions”, he said through an interpreter.

He then is set to head to Moscow on Thursday to meet with Putin, a session that world leaders had hoped would pull the Russians more fully into the coalition fight against the Islamic State.

A French official on Tuesday said warplanes struck the command center in Tal Afar.

“I thought what Hollande said was telling”, Biden told a handful of reporters after Obama’s meeting with the French president.

But beyond reiterating that America stands in “total solidarity” with France in the fight against IS, he did not propose any significant changes to the USA strategy against IS. Instead, the two leaders emphasized that rooting out the Islamic State in Syria is intertwined with ending the bloody civil war there – and that requires more intensive diplomacy toward a political settlement. “I had a conversation with President Putin in Turkey, and I indicated to him at the time that to the extent that they make that strategic shift – to try to bring all the parties together; try to execute a political transition that all parties would agree to; and refocus attention on going after [ISIS].”, the president further said.

“We agreed on a very important issue: To strike the terrorists only, Daesh and the jihadi groups only, and not to strike the forces and the groups that are fighting against the terrorists”, Hollande said after the meeting, referring to IS by its Arabic acronym.

Hollande’s stop in Washington, D.C., is part of his whirlwind diplomatic tour to garner support from a broader coalition following the November 13 attacks on Paris that left some 129 dead.

“The first thing President Obama should be doing with President Hollande is remembering the concept of the West and showing and meaning a willingness to put intelligence, military and economic tools in defense of those values”.