Obama, Hollande to address Daesh strategy

WASHINGTON

President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande will discuss additional steps that can be taken to defeat Daesh during a bilateral meeting Tuesday.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters that the leaders will discuss further efforts that Paris can take to “continue to ramp up their contribution to our counter-ISIL effort, including in the category of military contributions that France is prepared to make to this effort".

Obama and Hollande will also discuss additional security assistance that Washington can provide to Paris, Earnest added.

The visit will be the first foreign trip for Hollande since bomb and gun attacks claimed by the extremists killed 130 people and injured hundreds more in Paris.

The French president is in the midst of diplomatic efforts aimed at increasing military cooperation to defeat Daesh.

The U.S. is leading a coalition of 65 nations, including France, to combat the extremist group in Iraq and Syria.

In addition to airstrikes, the coalition is attempting to train and equip local forces, and the U.S. is set to deploy approximately 50 special forces to Syria to help in that effort very soon.

Vice President Joe Biden met with representatives of 59 coalition member countries on Monday to discuss, “how countries who are part of our coalition can ramp up their contributions to our efforts,” Earnest said.

Following his visit to Washington, Hollande will travel to Moscow where he will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday.

Russia has been carrying out an independent air campaign against what it says are Daesh targets in Syria. But the U.S. has maintained that the vast majority of Russia’s airstrikes have targeted moderate groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, not Daesh.

“The Russians need to ensure that they have a military strategy that is consistent with the diplomatic and political objectives that they themselves have identified,” Earnest said.

“President Putin himself has acknowledged that the terrible problems that are plaguing Syria now will require a political solution and a political transition. But as long as Russia is engaged in a significant military effort to prop up Bashar al-Assad, that is only going to make it more difficult for that political transition to actually take place,” he added.