Obama Urges Hollande and Europe to Scale Up Strikes on ISIS

President Obama hosted his French counterpart at the White House Tuesday, showing emotional union but saying it was up to Europe to intensify the fight against Islamic State (ISIS) extremists.

“We are here today to declare that the United States and France stand united in total solidarity to deliver justice to these terrorists and those who sent them and to defend our nations,” Obama said during the first meeting between the two leaders since the November 13 wave of deadly attacks in Paris.

ISIS is a threat to all nations, Obama said, according to the New York Times. “It cannot be tolerated. It must be destroyed. And we must do it together,” he added.

Despite his emotional rhetoric, Obama did not publicly outline plans for increased actions against ISIS, instead suggesting the violence in Paris might finally push Europe to make a more serious appraisal of the threat.

“We also think, as Francois said, that there may be new openness on the part of other coalition members to help resource and provide additional assistance, both to the coalition as a whole and to the local forces on the ground,” Obama said.

Hollande, who was in Washington for several hours only, said he was making his way around the globe to recruit other world leaders in the fight against ISIS.

France now has a “relentless determination to fight terrorism everywhere and anywhere,” Hollande stated, later saying that he plans to “scale up our strikes” against ISIS.

Russia, Syria Foreign Ministers to Meet in Moscow, Says Damascus

Syrian foreign minister Walid Muallem and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov will meet in Moscow on Friday, an advisor to the Syrian president told AFP.

“We will have an exchange of views on the Vienna meeting and the current situation,” said Buthaina Shaaban, an advisor to Assad who will be traveling along with the Syrian delegation to Moscow.

Friday’s meeting between Lavrov and Muallem follows an agreement reached among world powers in Vienna on an 18-month peace plan for Syria to create a transitional government, adopt a new constitution and hold new elections.

The talks in Vienna did not include representatives from the Syrian government or opposition.

Shaaban said that Iran and Russia – Assad’s two strongest allies – were working to defend the interests of the Syrian people.

“Russia and Iran are trying their best to bring the West in to understand what is going on in Syria, but the West doesn’t have the Syrian people as its top priority,” she said.

“The Russians definitively understand what’s going on in Syria. They are definitively serious and honest, when they say something they implement it.”

High Civilian Casualties Lower Chances of U.S.–Russia Coordination

U.S. officials have said reports of heavy civilian casualties in connection to Russian airstrikes will most likely prevent any kind of coordination between Moscow and Washington against ISIS extremists, Reuters reports.

Speaking at the White House on Tuesday alongside his French counterpart, President Obama restated that Russia was “welcome to be part of this broad-based coalition that we’ve set up,” but it must first shift its focus from bolstering Assad and redirect its airstrikes away from moderate opposition forces toward the ISIS militants.

Reuters states that U.S. officials in both the White House and the Pentagon have concerns over widespread reports detailing high civilian casualties from Russian strikes, although the issue has been given far less attention than Assad’s use of “barrel bombs.”

By coordinating with Russian forces in Syria, the U.S. could be seen as complicit in Russia’s killing and wounding of civilians, anonymous U.S. officials told Reuters,

The officials said they did not dispute reports from Syrian human rights activists that Russian bombs have hit mosques, hospitals and civilian infrastructure in Syria, killing hundreds of people.

Recommended Reads

• The Washington Post: How the United States Helped Create the Islamic State
• The New York Times: A Dream of Secular Utopia in ISIS’ Backyard
• VOX: The Little-Known Group at the Center of the Turkey–Russia Crisis
• Politico: Petraeus Warns Against Sending Ground Troops to Syria
• Foreign Policy: Obama’s Solution to Beating the Islamic State: Have Assad Peacefully Step Aside
• The Intercept: After Paris, Syrian Refugees Face a Darkening Future
• The New Yorker: The Syrian War and the Russian Jet

Top image: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a meeting at the presidential palace in Ankara, Turkey, on Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2015. In a long-feared escalation of tensions between Russia and NATO, as well as of the Syrian conflict, Turkey on Tuesday shot down a Russian warplane that it claims had crossed into its airspace during a sortie against rebels in Syria. Turkey has vowed to support the Syrian Turkmen, and Erdogan on Tuesday criticized Russian actions in the Turkmen regions, saying there were no Islamic State group fighters in the area. Erdogan’s wife Emine Erdogan stands at the left. (Kayhan Ozer/Pool Photo via AP)