U.S. President Barack Obama and his French counterpart Francois Hollande pledged Tuesday to stand “united” on counterterrorism and increase efforts to “jointly” destroy the Islamic State (IS), also known as ISIL.
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However, Hollande said he and Obama made an agreement to “scale up our strikes both in Syria and in Iraq to broaden our scope to strengthen our intelligence sharing regarding the targets”.
Just over 10 days after terrorist attacks in Paris killed 130 people, Hollande arrived in Washington seeking to stitch together a tighter alliance against the Islamic State, which has claimed responsibility.
Whatever their differences may be, Paris views Washington as its most important ally in the fight against Islamic State, de Gilbert said, and France will be asking its other partners to do more as well.
“Rather, they focused their violence on the very spirit of France and, by extension, on all liberal democracies”, Obama said.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, officials said that the United States, by working with Moscow militarily in Syria, could be seen as complicit in the killing and wounding of civilians.
Obama added that the best way to bring peace to Syria is to support a cease fire and a political transition away from Assad.
Hollande said unequivocally Tuesday that “Bashar Assad can not be the future of Syria”.
Obama said Turkey’s downing of a Russian fighter jet proved the need for greater coordination over Syria.
Obama cautioned that information about the incident was still emerging.
President Barack Obama has been briefed by his national security team that there is now “no specific, credible threat” to the U.S. from the dreaded ISIS terror group. Russian Federation has sided with China, Brunei and Iran.
Russia’s increasingly large role in the Syrian civil war would get even bigger if the USA became an ally, but that’s become increasingly unlikely because of civilian casualties.
“The Paris attacks generated a lot of emotions”, he said through an interpreter. “It is radical extremist Islam, and he needs to be able to say that, define the enemy, and then say, ‘Look, we’re going to turn this climate summit into a summit of how to eradicate radical extremism from the face of this Earth'”. “But for now that is not enough to cleanse Syria of rebels and terrorists and to protect Russians from possible terrorist attacks”. He spoke to British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday, will speak to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday and is due to visit Moscow on Thursday. Mr Holland said the closure of the border was “a matter of urgency”.
President Hollande has called for the formation of a broad, single coalition to combat Islamic State.
Obama and Hollande were both asked if they could set a deadline for Assad’s exit.
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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 outside the capital.
