Obama on fight against Islamic State: ‘Russia is the outlier’

President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday that Russia would be welcome in their global anti-extremist coalition – as long as it concentrates efforts on striking the Islamic State rather than on protecting the Syrian regime.

As if to underscore their frustration with Moscow, Obama and Hollande played down the biggest news of the day – Turkey’s downing of a Russian warplane– and instead chided Russia for impeding progress toward a political settlement to the Syrian conflict.

Obama dismissed Russia 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. The United States, western European countries, Turkey and several Arab states are among the members.

“Russia is the outlier,” Obama said.

Tuesday’s summit at the White House was the first face-to-face meeting for Obama and Hollande since Islamic State operatives killed 130 people Nov. 13 in coordinated attacks in Paris. Obama said the two countries “stand united in total solidarity to deliver justice to these terrorists,” even as Turkey’s downing of the warplane complicates efforts to broaden the fight against the Islamic State.

The Turkish military Tuesday announced it shot down a Russian military aircraft near the Syrian border after it ignored multiple warnings and entered Turkish airspace, a charge Moscow immediately denied. Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the action as “a stab in the back carried out by the accomplices of terrorists.”

Both Obama and Hollande pointedly ignored the plane episode in their opening remarks at a White House news conference and, when pressed for a response, defended NATO ally Turkey.

“I do think that this points to an ongoing problem with the Russian operations in the sense that they are operating very close to a Turkish border,” Obama said.

Hollande called the incident a serious one. He said Turkey is providing details to NATO and that the focus now was to prevent an escalation.

Obama and Hollande tried to focus instead on their joint efforts against the Islamic State, lauding more than 8,000 air strikes that they said have helped to reclaim some territory.

“We decided to scale up our strikes both in Syria and Iraq, to broaden their scope and to strengthen intelligence sharing,” Hollande said.

The United States has taken only incremental military action in recent months, sending in a small team of special forces in an advisory role and beefing up aid to Kurdish and Arab militias on the ground.

The Obama administration also has touted as a positive sign the resumption of talks among key players on how to reach a negotiated political settlement to the conflict. That effort requires Russia as an interlocutor for the Assad regime.

Turkey’s attack on the plane comes as Putin is in the midst of a diplomatic campaign to cozy up to U.S. allies, especially France, in an apparent bid to create a so-called “grand coalition.” After weeks of waging a separate bombing campaign, mainly targeting Syrian rebels who don’t belong to the Islamic State, Russia began striking the extremist group in earnest after a bomb brought down a Russian passenger plane last month, killing all 224 on board.

The United States and its allies have cautiously welcomed Russian military support so long as it’s focused on the Islamic State. But the sharp difference over Assad’s role is a major sticking point to a comprehensive political settlement for Syria.

Hollande said unequivocally Tuesday that “Bashar Assad cannot be the future of Syria.”

“If Russia fully commits to a political solution in Syria, we want to gather all countries, all those willing to find and implement a political solution,” Hollande said. “We don’t want to exclude anyone.”

This story was originally published November 24, 2015 at 11:44 AM with the headline "Obama on fight against Islamic State: ‘Russia is the outlier’."