Hollande, who spent just a few hours in Washington as he was making his way across the globe to meet with counterparts, said France now had a “relentless determination to fight terrorism everywhere and anywhere” and would “scale up our strikes” against the Islamic State in Syria and in Iraq.
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President Obama and French President François Hollande promised to increase cooperation and expand attacks against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
France wants the United States to support Russia’s military actions in Syria, but a conflict with Turkey would make it hard for Washington to support Moscow.
“Terrorism can strike anywhere, so we have to act”, French President Francois Hollande told reporters in Moscow. The extremist group claimed responsibility for the downing of a Russian passenger plane over Egypt, when all 224 people onboard were killed, as well as the November 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. “We will exchange information about whom to hit and whom not to hit”. Middle East analyst Aaron David Miller of the Woodrow Wilson Center says bridging those different viewpoints will not be easy, but only Russian Federation has the necessary leverage if Assad is to be pushed out.
Obama has been criticized by Republicans and some Democrats for not further ramping up the war on the Islamic State, and new polls show that the public has little confidence in his handling of the threat.
President Obama has repeatedly doubled down on his current strategy of conducting and assisting with airstrikes, utilizing humanitarian assistance and facilitating negotiations between Syrian President Bashar Assad and the Syrian rebels that would see Assad leave power.
Speaking in Moscow at a joint news conference with the Syrian foreign minister Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday that peace talks for Syria can not go ahead until all parties involved agree on a list of which groups should be listed as terrorist and which as legitimate opposition. Washington plans to create a no-fly zone over this territory to complicate Russian aerospace forces’ airstikes against ISIS terrorists.
But he maintained that Turkey had a right to defend its airspace and charged that Russian air activity near the Turkey-Syria border has contributed to the crisis.
“We hope that they refocus their attention on what is the most substantial threat, and that they serve as a constructive partner”, Obama said of Russian Federation.
“You helped us win our independence, we helped the French to break free from fascism”, said Mr Obama, as usual forgetting to emphasize the crucial role played by the USSR in the liberation of the continent. “We will be able to confirm what happened in part through our own Intelligence and our own tracking of that border area”, he said.
After coming under intense criticism for his response to the attacks, Obama turned up his rhetoric on ISIS Sunday, saying during a press conference in Malaysia that his efforts to stamp out the group would succeed.
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As the search intensified for the 26-year-old suspect, authorities said a fourth person has been charged in connection with the bloodshed in Paris.
