During Tuesday’s talks at the White House, the French leader is expected to press the American president to commit more assets in the fight against Islamic State, as Hollande enlists worldwide support for a coordinated attack on the militants.
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“People should remember that no refugee can enter our borders until they undergo the highest security checks of anyone traveling to the United States”, Obama said in his address.
Putin – whose forces have been focused on bombing enemies of Assad rather than ISIS – said he’s also ready to cooperate with the U.S.-led coalition of 60-plus countries.
As if to underscore their frustration with Moscow, Obama and Hollande played down the biggest news of the day – Turkey’s downing of a Russian warplane- and instead chided Russia for impeding progress toward a political settlement to the Syrian conflict.
He added that immediate priorities for both sides in the coming weeks would be to free Raqqa, Islamic State’s Syrian stronghold, as well as targeting oil infrastructure controlled by the group.
Ankara has said its jets shot down the Russian aircraft after it violated Turkish airspace 10 times within a five-minute period, a move that Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced as a “stab in the back” by another key player in Syria’s brutal civil war.
US President Barack Obama on Tuesday vowed “total solidarity” with France in the fight against Islamic State, amid growing pressure from Paris to cooperate with Russian Federation in Syria.
Hollande, for his part, thanked all Russians for their reaction to the Paris attacks, saying: “We know that terrorism is our common enemy”.
“France will not intervene militarily on the ground”, Hollande said.
Washington has been providing intelligence to help France direct its airstrikes in Syria and will increase that cooperation, the U.S. president said.
The French leader will hold talks in Paris with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday and with Putin in Moscow on Thursday, before dining with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the French capital on Sunday.
Mr Obama said: “Russia’s strikes against the moderate opposition only bolster the Assad regime”. This is what we must do, all of us, we, Turkey, Russia.
The United States has already sent special forces and Fabius said France could follow suit.
Before heading to Moscow, Hollande met Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in Paris, who offered only vague support for “a coalition of greater and greater strength that is up to the task of… the destruction of Daesh”, using yet another name for IS. “We don’t want to exclude anyone”. French officials have said they are studying whether to deploy special forces to assist them, a measure that was discussed with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington on Tuesday. “I hope that translates into action and it’s not just language”, said Philippe Le Corre, a former senior adviser to the French Defense Ministry who is now a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
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“This was an attack on our free and open societies, where people come together to celebrate and sing and compete”, he said.
