Obama, Hollande talks complicated by Russian plane incident

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said: “The United States is certainly pulling more than our own weight”.

But Obama also suggested the nature of Russia’s air campaign is contributing to such confrontations.

Meanwhile, police in France said they were analysing what is thought to be a suicide belt similar to those used in the Paris attacks, found without its detonator in a dustbin in the Montrouge suburb of the capital.

Almost five years of clashes between Assad’s government and rebel forces have created a vacuum that has allowed the Islamic State to thrive.

“We do not succumb to fear”, he said.

“As Francois said, our humanitarian duty to help desperate refugees and our duty to security, those duties go hand in hand”, Obama said. The visit has been complicated by Turkey’s shoot-down of a Russian warplane on Tuesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin emphasized the need to cut off the Islamic State’s ability to generate revenue through oil smuggling.

Even before the incident, Hollande faced a tough challenge in getting Obama to agree to a partnership with Moscow.

The USA appeared to be keeping its distance from the overall disagreement.

U.S.-led military efforts come amid parallel talks about a diplomatic solution to end Syria’s civil war. Obviously, you know, these are on open channels. We’ve never forgotten how the French people stood with us after 9/11. “We must uphold our ideals now”. The Senate has not yet voted on the measure.

Rejecting the notion of an existential threat, Obama said IS “can’t beat us on the battlefield, so they try to terrorize us into being afraid”.

A new poll issued by CBS News shows that 69% say an attack on American soil is at least somewhat likely.

French officials say Hollande is well aware of the complexities involved in ramping up the global effort to destroy IS, but they say he will press to convince Obama that the Paris attacks make a measured approach to defeating IS obsolete.

Obama called Islamic State a “barbaric terrorist group”, adding that “its murderous ideology poses a serious threat to all of us”. Navy Commander Elissa Smith, a press officer for the Middle East at the Pentagon’s Office of the Secretary of Defense, told CNBC in an emailed statement Friday: “We are aware that ISIL has acquired some USA weapons that had been in the possession of either the Syrian regime or the Iraqi Security Forces”.

Efforts to train and equip moderate rebel groups in Syria have struggled, although Mr Obama has authorised the deployment of 50 special operations forces to the country to jump-start the programme.

French President Francois Hollande will arrive in Washington Tuesday to deliver a message to President Obama about the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS): This is an emergency.

Hollande’s meeting with Merkel may also prove beneficial in that the German chancellor could potentially influence Putin’s position on Assad, Khrushcheva said.

While Russian Federation is backing a new diplomatic effort in Syria, Moscow still refuses to support steps that explicitly call for removing Assad from power.