PARIS (AP) – French President Francois Hollande has criticized Turkey’s “contradictory” military intervention in Syria and warned Russian Federation not to become a “protagonist” in the war.
Advertisement
The Security Council is set to discuss on Tuesday a report by weapons inspectors that found the Syrian government deployed chemical weapons on at least two occasions and is suspected of deploying them in at least three other instances.
Addressing a gathering of French ambassadors in Paris, Francois Hollande called on all parties to stop the fighting and return to peace talks for the country.
He said that was understandable after attacks the country has suffered, but that Turkey was also taking aim at Kurdish forces who are fighting Islamic State with the support of the anti-Assad coalition of which France forms a part.
Turkish forces last week launched a two-pronged operation against IS and Kurdish fighters from the People’s Protection Units (YPG) inside Syria.
On Ukraine, Hollande said he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had contact with President Petro Poroshenko and Russia’s Vladimir Putin throughout August. Its military campaign aimed to help Syrian rebels drive the Islamic State group out of the border town of Jarablus, but was also directed against the US -led allied Kurdish forces that have gained control of most of the territory along the Turkey-Syria border in recent months.
Advertisement
Earlier on Tuesday, French trade minister Matthias Fekl said he would request a halt to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations at a meeting of trade ministers in the September.
