French President Francois Hollande, meanwhile, said he will meet with U.S. and Russian leaders to discuss pooling their efforts to destroy the Islamic State group.
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Mitchell then boasted for the President: “President Obama, widely criticized for not condemning the Paris attacks strongly enough, tried to make up for it today, pledging to escalate the war against ISIS”.
“We will not allow them to do it”, Hollande told reporters referring to the terrorist strikes in Paris.
Illustrating the leaders’ message on tighter cooperation, France said its warplanes had hit an Islamic State command center near its key western Iraqi stronghold of Mosul, in a strike led with the US Air Force.
The president said that if intelligence were to reveal a credible threat to the US, the public would be informed.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It can not be tolerated. It must be destroyed.
“We can work together with Russian Federation if it focuses its military action on ISIS”, Hollande said.
“We’re stepping up the pressure on ISIL where it lives”, he said, using the White House’s preferred term for the jihadi group.
“It’s going to be hard and we should not be under any illusions”, Obama said.
“In short, this was not only a strike against one of the world’s great cities, it was an attack against the world itself”. “We do not want to exclude anyone”, he said.
“The leaders agreed on the importance of de-escalating the situation and pursuing arrangements to ensure that such incidents do not happen again”, the White House said on Tuesday, referring to Obama’s telephone call to Erdogan.
“I will ask President Putin, as I’ve done before … that the strikes must be against Daesh (Islamic State), against terrorism”, Hollande said.
Hollande’s meeting with Obama follows the attacks in Paris that killed 130 people at the national sports stadium, a concert venue and bars and restaurants in heart of the French capital.
As Obama and Hollande announced Tuesday that the USA led coalition would intensify its airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the two leaders suggested their efforts are limited by Russia’s lack of cooperation. He says if Europe abandons the millions of refugees fleeing bombs and the Islamic State, it would betray what Europe stands for.
But beyond reiterating that America stands in “total solidarity” with France in the fight against IS, he did not propose any significant changes to the USA strategy against IS.
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Mr Hollande has called on Washington and Moscow to form a grand coalition against the ISIS, in light of both the Paris attacks and the downing of the Russian plane over Sinai. Given Russia’s military capabilities and the influence they have over Assad, them cooperating would be enormously helpful to a solution in Syria and allow us to focus attention on ISIL. They also are hoping to take back territories under control by ISIS.
