Paris Cautiously Backs Putin Call for Syria Coalition, Vows More Strikes on IS
France on Monday gave cautious backing at the United Nations to a call from Russian President Vladimir Putin for a "broad coalition" to fight the Islamic State group in Syria.
Speaking to the U.N. General Assembly, French President Francois Hollande called such a coalition "possible, desirable, necessary" but said it would have to have "a clear basis, otherwise it would never come to light."
Putin likened his proposed coalition to the "anti-Hitler" alliance that fought together during World War II and said Muslim countries "should play a key role."
"We must address the problems that we are all facing and create a broad anti-terror coalition," Putin said in his first to the U.N. General Assembly in a decade.
Hollande used his address to rule out President Bashar Assad from a solution to the Syrian conflict, saying it was impossible to make "the victims and the executioner" work together.
Russia and Iran have both called for the Assad regime to remain in place to fight against jihadists.
Hollande blamed the Syrian regime for the chaos in the country and denounced what he called the "tragedy" of terrorism and dictatorship.
The hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Syria for Europe are not only fleeing war but "fleeing the regime of Bashar Assad," he said.
"Still today it is the same regime which is dropping bombs on innocent civilians," he said.
"It's not because we have a terrorist group (Islamic State) that itself massacres, kills, rapes, destroys the heritage of humankind that it means there is a pardon for the regime that created this situation," he said.
Earlier in the day, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said France will carry out "more strikes" against the Islamic State group in Syria.
"There will be more strikes, there will be more actions to protect ourselves, to prevent these training camps for foreign combatants from continuing and training terrorist actors who will come to France, or Europe, to attack us," he said on France's BFMTV.
France carried out its first air strikes in Syria on Sunday, when six French warplanes hit an IS training camp near the eastern city of Deir Ezzor.
"We struck militarily an extremely sensitive site for (IS)," he said, describing it as a "strategic hub" for militants travelling between Iraq and Syria, which also has significant petrol resources.
"We have proof that in the training camps of (IS) in Syria, foreign combatants are preparing, organising themselves not to go fight in the Levant but to carry out attacks in Europe and on our own territory," Le Drian added.
France has been part of the US-led coalition bombarding IS targets in Iraq since September 2014, and has carried out 215 out of nearly 4,500 strikes there, according to French and US figures.
But until now it limited its air strikes on the extremist group to Iraqi territory.
Hollande has been under political pressure to take action against IS after a series of jihadist attacks in France, and fears over hundreds of citizens who have gone to wage jihad who could return home battle-hardened and vengeful.
The United States and its coalition partners including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain and the UAE have carried out more than 2,500 air strikes in Syria, according to U.S. figures.
Source: Agence France Presse
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