They called on Russian Federation to join the worldwide efforts, but only if Moscow ends its support for Syria’s embattled president.
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In spite of some of the differences in ideas on how to battle ISIS, Obama and Hollande showed unity and strong allegiance towards each other on Tuesday’s press conference as the two exchange rhetorical support at a time of global terror. At least one of the pilots was presumed dead. But this latest incident has only widened the gap between Franco-American and Russian goals in Syria.
“Crowds gather in the Place de la Republique, including a mother who brought her children – she said, “to let them see that we should not be afraid”, Obama 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. But Hollande’s mission quickly became entangled with the fallout from the downed Russian military plane.
Asked if there was any possibility that the plane was actually shot down inside Syria, Stoltenberg said: “The allied assessments that we have are consistent with the information we have from Turkey”, he told a news conference.
The Russian and French presidents also agreed to only target IS and similar jihadi groups. He noted that France had come to American aid during the revolution, and America to France’s during the world wars.
The U.S.-Russia split has made Hollande an even more critical link between the two superpowers.
Suspected ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud and another man were planning a suicide attack on the Paris financial district of La Defense on November 18 or 19, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Tuesday. “But that’s not enough”.
A military analyst for “Komsomolskaya Pravda”, retired Colonel Victor Baranetz commented on the French leader’s visit to the United States for “Russian peacekeeper”.
“We are here to declare that the United States and France stand united in total solidarity to deliver justice to terrorists and those who sent them, and to defend our nations”, he said.
Shortly after their meeting, a French official in Washington said French warplanes had struck an Islamic State command center west of the Iraqi city of Mosul.
The U.S. has deployed more than 3,000 troops to Iraq to train and assist security forces there.
Obama is calling it a “barbaric terrorist group”.
Others, including many Democrats, fear it could be the beginning of a slide toward a much larger engagement, though to date Obama has largely stuck to getting other countries to offer more assistance as part of the 65-country coalition fighting ISIS.
Obama, so far, has resisted pushing direct USA involvement to new levels.
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“Russia’s the outlier”, he added, noting that strikes against moderate opposition fighters “bolster the Assad regime”.
