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France and Russian Federation agree to ‘coordinate’ strikes against Islamic State

Speaking at a joint news conference with Hollande, Obama cited in particular Europe’s resistance to sharing information on airline passengers.

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Obama just returned to Washington on Monday after a trip to Turkey, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Cameron believes that if Russia, France, and his country will all decide to join the U.S.-led coalition, a strengthened and highly offensive military move should be made in order to relieve the people of “the very direct threat that (ISIS) poses to our country and our way of life”.

Last week, Hollande called for the USA and Russian Federation to set aside their policy divisions over Syria and “fight this terrorist army in a broad, single coalition”.

Obama acknowledged fear among Americans of a Paris-style attack in the United States.

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.

Hollande said France was already coordinating with Russian ships in the eastern Mediterranean since the French Charles De Gaulle aircraft carrier arrived in the region on the weekend.

President Obama is scheduled meet with French President Francois Hollande tomorrow to discuss the coalition’s next steps.

Said Mr Hollande: “We have a resolution from the secuirty council, we must take action against Daesh”. “We do not want to exclude anyone”, he said.

The French leader will hold talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Paris on Wednesday and with Putin in Moscow on Thursday, before dining with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the French capital on Sunday.

President Hollande and I agree that the Russia’s strikes against the moderate opposition only bolster the Assad regime, whose brutality has helped to fuel the rise of ISIL.

“He has been the problem, he can not be the solution”, Hollande said. But Russia denies those accusations.

“Russia is the outlier”, Obama said.

But he also noted that, “Turkey, like every country, has the right to defend its territory and its airspace”.

And there really was little difference in the two national leaders’ strategies, Milbank conceded in his column, but still, Hollande was upbeat “while Obama was discouraging and lawyerly” while Hollande evoked the spirit of ex-President George W. Bush “transplanted into the body of a short, pudgy, bespectacled French socialist with wrinkled suit-pants”. “That would be extremely damaging”.

Turkey’s attack on the plane comes as Putin is in the midst of a diplomatic campaign to cozy up to USA allies, especially France, in an apparent bid to create a so-called “grand coalition”.

He described the hostile act as a “stab in the back”, administered by “the accomplices of terrorists”.

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So far Putin appears not to be backing down on any of Paris’ preconditions and the downing of its jet – one of the most serious publicly acknowledged clashes between Russian Federation and a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member for half a century – has stiffened his resolve.

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