Without any major new commitments to announce alongside Hollande, Obama instead touted a new intelligence sharing agreement announced last week that has helped France target ISIS sites in Raqqa, Syria.
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President Barack Obama’s stoic, scholarly demeanor during his appearance with French leader Francois Hollande has netted him a new nickname from Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank: “President O-bummer”.
France has stepped up its air strikes following the Paris attacks, relying in part on US intelligence to hit targets in Raqqa, the Islamic State group’s stronghold in Syria.
“We like the French” for their “mindset” their “culture” and “verve”, said Mr. Obama, at a joint press conference with Hollande. Russia, on the other hand, has been Assad’s staunchest ally.
“We hope that they refocus their attention on what is the most-substantial threat, and that they serve as a constructive partner”, Obama said of Russian Federation.
Tuesday’s meeting came hours after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border.
Both Russia and France have intensified their airstrikes against ISIS in Syria, with Russia targeting trucks transporting oil, a major source of income for the terror organization.
Hollande wants the U.S.-led coalition to start cooperating with Russian Federation, which is also launching airstrikes in Syria.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked France to draw up a map of where groups fighting Islamic State militants operate in Syria in order not to bomb them, France’s foreign minister said on Friday.
Obama cautioned that information about the incident was still emerging and he discouraged escalation. Many Republican lawmakers are critical of the Democratic president’s plans to admit over the next year 10,000 refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war.
“It is about taking out their financing, hunting down their leaders, dismantling their networks, and taking back the land they now control”, Hollande said. “We don’t want to exclude anyone”.
He said he and the French leader had “agreed how we will cooperate in the near future, on a bilateral basis and with, as a whole, the coalition led by the United States”.
“Obama says, it’s this kind of slow, contained, run ’em down kind of strategy and the ISIS strategy is ‘Well, as long as we’re standing and the black flag is flying, we’re winning, ‘” he explained.
Russia carried out heavy raids in Syria’s northern Latakia province on Wednesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said, in the same area where Turkey downed the Russian fighter.
Obama dismissed Russian Federation and Iran, backers of Syrian President Bashar Assad, as a “coalition of two”, compared to the 65-nation bloc that’s focused on defeating the Islamic State.
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Renzi warned that Libya could be the “next emergency” and said a solution was urgently needed to its political crisis, which has fuelled the growth of an IS affiliate close to Europe’s southern border. France has invoked an European Union solidarity clause committing European Union member states to assist it in responding to ISIS’ November 13 attacks in Paris, which left 130 dead and hundreds more wounded.
