Obama, Hollande pledge solidarity in the fight against the Islamic State

U.S. President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande have downplayed World War 3 fears sparked by Turkey.

Hollande is trying to rally support this week for a more coordinated worldwide campaign to destroy Islamic State.

President Obama pledged yesterday that the United States and its allies will “win” the battle against the Islamic State as he faces mounting pressure to escalate the fight against terrorist extremists in the wake of a series of bloody tragedies.

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. Hollande has said France will press forward with its plans to accept 30,000 Syrian refugees, but he acknowledged on Tuesday that there is a need to tighten Europe’s open borders.

Russian Federation supports Syrian president President Bashar Al-Assad, while the U.S. believes he must be removed and supports the Kurds instead. The president has resisted a more extensive involvement in Iraq and Syria, arguing that it would only entangle the United States in another quagmire like those he inherited.

“France isn’t looking for more than the USA can accept and welcome, which is more Russian strikes against Islamic State and less Russian strikes against rebels”, de Gilbert said.

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.

As the two men were talking, French and US jets destroyed an Islamic State command centre near Mosul in Iraq, a French official said.

“We, therefore, decided, President Obama and myself, to scale up our strikes both in Syria and Iraq to broaden their scope, to strengthen our intelligence sharing regarding the targets we might aim at”.

“It is not conceivable that Mr. Assad can regain legitimacy in a country in which a large majority of that country despises Assad and will not stop fighting so long as he’s in power”, Obama said Sunday at a news conference in Kuala Lumpur.

“If we’re serious about that, Turkey needs to be an ally and we need to show support”.

He said the United States would continue to quickly share intelligence information with France and called on European Union countries to require airlines to share passenger information.

Mr Hollande says France is maintaining its position that it will not put troops on the ground in Syria to fight IS.

In a joint press conference held by Mr. Obama and Mr. Hollande, the USA president said he is still waiting for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s official correspondence about the incident.

“We’ll deliver justice to these terrorists and those who sent them”, Obama said.

Obama said that given Russia’s “military capabilities and the influence they have with Assad, their cooperation would be helpful”.