Assad Says His Troops Advancing, Thanks Russia

Last week, Hollande called for the US and Russian Federation to set aside their policy divisions over Syria and “fight this terrorist army in a broad, single coalition”.

SLIDE 1 of 4 President Barack Obama speaks at a news conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Sunday, Nov. 22, 2015.

Hollande said he and Obama made a decision to scale up and broaden the scope of air strikes in Syria and Iraq and to strengthen intelligence sharing on Islamic State targets.

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad says his forces are advancing on “almost” all fronts thanks to Russian airstrikes that began nearly two months ago and have tipped the balance in his favor in some parts of the country.

In Southeast Asia, President Barack Obama has taken a softer tone on human rights and corruption in a part of the world that rights groups claim is rife with abuses.

From Washington, Mr Hollande will travel to Moscow for meetings with Mr Putin. But Hollande is likely to leave Washington without firm backing for his call to bring Russian Federation into a new coalition to fight the extremists.

But Mr Hollande’s mission quickly became entangled with the fallout from a Russian military plane downed by Turkey – an incident with echoes of the Cold War.

Obama cautioned that information about the incident was still emerging and he discouraged escalation. Secretary of State John F. Kerry has been pursuing that objective in talks with representatives of Russia, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other countries, although they’ve yet to bear fruit – a reflection of how hard it will be to persuade Assad’s backers to agree on a timetable for his exit.

Mr Obama is now facing increased pressure at home and overseas to ramp up United States efforts to destroy the militants.

Obama also said that any political transition would be a “long, methodical process” that both the US and France are committed to. The White House is deeply skeptical of Putin’s motivations, given his longstanding support for Assad, and has accused Putin of bombing rebels fighting the Syrian leader instead of targeting the Islamic State.

Visiting a refugee center in the Malaysian capital, Obama on Saturday lamented the plight of the Rohingya, the ethnic Muslim group that has faced violence in Myanmar, a country the Obama’s administration has helped guide out of decades of military rule.

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

Obama was hit with a wave of criticism in the wake of the terrorists’ attacks in France and Lebanon, which left hundreds dead.

French and USA intelligence agencies had been tracking Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected mastermind behind the Paris attacks, this summer in Iraq and Syria before he went dark. “But that’s not enough”.

Rather than casting about for a new strategy, Obama said United States would intensify its current campaign of airstrikes and arming and training moderate forces.

“The U.S. has been conducting 80% or so of the airstrikes in Iraq and Syria and France has very importantly been the only European country to engage in airstrikes in Syria with us”, said Derek Chollet of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

The military planning comes amid a parallel diplomatic effort to ease Assad from office.