Hollande, on Moscow visit, calls for broad anti-IS coalition

Obama described Russian Federation as a power that is acting in Syria as an “outlier” of the global community, because while the United States and France form part of a coalition of 65 countries, Moscow “right now is a coalition of two, Iran and Russian Federation, supporting Assad”.

Speaking after a working dinner in the Kremlin with Putin, Hollande said they had agreed to target only Islamic State and similar jihadi groups in Syria.

Obama emphasized the long friendship between France and the United States and pledged to step up efforts to combat terrorism alongside its European partners.

“Current information suggests that ISIL (another acronym for ISIS), Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and other terrorist groups continue to plan terrorist attacks in multiple regions”, said a State Department travel advisory. “He committed to not bombing them once we’ve provided that”, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on RTL after accompanying Hollande to Moscow.

Francois Hollande has been on a diplomatic drive since the Paris attacks to increase cooperation in tackling IS, which holds large swathes of territory in both Syria and Iraq.

But Hollande received a cooler response from U.S. President Barack Obama when he flew to Washington on Tuesday, with the U.S. reluctant to intensify military action in Syria without a clear strategy or political track in place.

Hollande and Merkel said they hoped tensions would calm between Russia and Turkey – two potential components of the anti-IS alliance – which fell out over the downing of a Russian warplane at the Turkish-Syrian border.

Ankara has said its jets shot down the Russian aircraft after it violated Turkish airspace 10 times within a five-minute period, a move that Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced as a “stab in the back” by another key player in Syria’s brutal civil war.

“Until that happens, it’s very hard”, said Obama.

Hollande’s visit to the United States underscored the urgency on counterterrorism after the November 13 Paris attacks by IS, which killed at least 129 people and injured hundreds of others.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins meanwhile said the suspected ringleader of the deadly assaults in the French capital and an accomplice planned to carry out a suicide attack on the city’s La Defense business district the following week.

The U.S. campaign has centered largely on launching airstrikes, while training and assisting security forces on the ground in Iraq. But Hollande’s mission quickly became entangled with the fallout from the downed Russian military plane. Efforts to train and equip moderate rebel groups in Syria have struggled, and Obama has authorized the deployment of 50 special operations forces to jump-start the program.

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