AP Newsbreak: Iraq warned of attacks before Paris assault

“I don’t think anybody expects a single outcome that all of a sudden readily resolves all these hard issues”, said Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, ahead of the trip.

At the same time, military experts both within and outside the administration have proposed more modest measures that could significantly increase the pressure on the Islamic State if the president were to adopt them. In response to failures, Mr. Obama has tended to escalate US action in small increments unlikely to make a decisive difference like his recent decision to dispatch fewer than 50 Special Operations troops to Syria.

Iraqi intelligence said the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ordered an attack on coalition countries fighting against them in Iraq and Syria, as well as on Iran and Russian Federation, “through bombings or assassinations or hostage taking in the coming days”.

Obama told reporters the USA has been anxious about “these kinds of attacks”, but said there was no specific intelligence of the Paris attack that the US could have passed on to French authorities or acted on itself.

“This information can help the French – and not just the French, by the way – to deal with the aftermath, and not just with what happened, but also with terrorist attacks planned for the future”, Katz said.

While Obama did not single out his critics by name, a few Republican presidential candidates, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, have called for sending USA forces into Syria. The Islamic State didn’t start this fight. Had the USA never invaded Iraq, the Islamic State would not exist and the attacks in Paris may not have occurred.

“If you have a handful of people who don’t mind dying, they can kill a lot of people”, he said.

“I’m not aware of anything that was specific”, he said.

Obama’s comments followed a two-day meeting with leaders from the Group of 20 rich and developing countries.

Still, sharp differences over Assad’s future and disagreements about what militant groups in Syria should be considered terrorists have dampened hopes for a breakthrough.