French President Francois Hollande and US President Barack Obama pledged their solidarity in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), declaring that they would step up strikes in Syria and Iraq, but neither committed to boots on the ground. “It must be destroyed and we must do it together”, President Barack Obama said Tuesday.
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He is to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Paris on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Paris on Sunday.
“We, therefore, decided, President Obama and myself, to scale up our strikes both in Syria and Iraq to broaden their scope, to strengthen our intelligence sharing regarding the targets we might aim at”.
The Russian aircraft shot down over Turkey’s Hatay province, close to the Syrian border. One U.S. government source also said many of Russia’s targets in Syria have been supplied by Assad’s government.
Publicly, though, Obama outlined no concrete new actions that the United States would take, and he suggested that the attacks might finally prompt Europe to approach the threat more seriously. According to Politico, neither president would offer a timeline on how long they would allow Syrian President Bashar al Assad to remain in power as part of a transitional process.
But Obama said his top priority “is going to be to ensure that this does not escalate”.
Still, Toner said that if Turkmen fighters are coming under attack from Russian airstrikes “they have the right to defend themselves”.
After the Paris attacks, Mr Hollande was seeking to forge a broader and more co-ordinated coalition to focus on the war on Islamic State in Syria. The terrorist group is blamed for the November 13 attack in Paris that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds more at restaurants, a concert venue and outside a soccer stadium.
But Turkey’s downing of a Russian warplane has created problems for both France and the United States.
“This barbarous terrorist group ISIL or Daesh and its murderous ideology poses a serious threat to all of us”, Obama continued. Putin visited Iran on Monday to consult with leaders in Tehran who share his support for Assad.
“We will be able to confirm what happened in part through our own intelligence and our own tracking of that border area”, he said”.
The American president then invited both sides “to figure out what happened”, advising them against any “escalation”.
The United States, by working with Moscow militarily in Syria, could be seen as complicit in the killing and wounding of civilians, US officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. At stake are French regional elections in two weeks, and the presidential primaries next year, which are pushing Mr Hollande to demonstrate his influence and leadership in the fight against ISIS.
British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, whose country chairs the council this month, said a meeting could be held if requested and that the incident was not raised during a morning session.
As a result of the attack, which cost the Russian military 2 lives, Moscow announced that it will deploy its sophisticated S-400 missile defense systems to Syria.
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“That message to stay calm and act responsibly is something the USA, that North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, really wants to get through because we are talking about nuclear-armed Russian Federation and nuclear-armed North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and sliding into an open confrontation over Turkey”.
