Obama: U.S., France stand united against Islamic State, terrorism

Yet after French President François Hollande and U.S. President Barack Obama emerged from their White House meeting Tuesday, they made it clear that France has now become America’s essential European partner when it comes to destroying ISIS and charting a diplomatic road map for resolving the Syrian civil war.

President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande participate in a news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2015.

Hollande said the United States and France agreed to step up strikes in Syria and Iraq against Islamic State.

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

The two leaders also expressed their commitment to bringing about a transitional political process for peace in Syria and joint determination to continue the fight against Islamic State jihadists, the statement added.

Taking this opportunity, Obama also recalled who, according to him, had liberated France or Europe from the Nazis.

“We can not succumb to fear”, Obama said after he discussed with Hollande on counter-IS efforts, “Make no mistake, we will win, and groups like ISIL will lose”.

Both Russia and Turkey are already engaged in air campaigns in Syria, though to different ends; and both would be vital to any effort at creating a more robust coalition against IS. French President Francois Hollande will preside over a national ceremony on November 27 honoring the at least 130 victims of the deadliest attacks on France in decades.

He said he and the French leader had “agreed how we will cooperate in the near future, on a bilateral basis and with, as a whole, the coalition led by the United States”. The group appears to now be focusing on targets outside its base in Syria and Iraq, including attacks in Lebanon and Turkey and the downing of a Russian airliner over Egypt. Given the rash of attacks, Obama is now facing increased pressure at home and overseas to ramp up US efforts to destroy the militants.

“We view this as the formation of a wide anti-terrorist coalition under the aegis of the United Nations”, Putin said.

“We want to gather all countries”, Hollande said. While Russian President Vladimir Putin says his country is targeting the Islamic State militants, the USA contends Moscow is going after rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad, a Kremlin ally.

The United States and its allies have cautiously welcomed Russian military support so long as it’s focused on the Islamic State.

In what could be a call for the biggest and most intense get-together for the discussion of intensifying ISIS attacks, France, Russia, and even Great Britain have stated that they are all for the total eradication of this generation’s strongest terrorist group.

“I do think that this points to an ongoing problem with the Russian operations in the sense that they are operating very close to a Turkish border”, Obama said.

President Hollande and I agree that the Russia’s strikes against the moderate opposition only bolster the Assad regime, whose brutality has helped to fuel the rise of ISIL.