...the Socialist president of La Belle France, an economic bad joke for la Belle France but seemingly a foreign policy realist...
called Saturday for international action against an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, warning that the recent losses sustained by ISIS could embolden other hard boy groups.
"ISIS (the Arabic acronym for ISIS) is in retreat, that is beyond dispute," Hollande said after a meeting with the leaders of the United States, Germany, Britannia, Italia and Ukraine on the sidelines of a NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions...
summit in Warsaw.
But, Hollande added, "We must also avoid a situation whereby as ISIS becomes weaker, other groups become stronger."
Hollande singled out al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra
...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli sh-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ...
Front as particularly standing to benefit from the US-led military campaign against its arch-rival ISIS.
Faced with a barrage of
"We must coordinate among ourselves to continue actions against ISIS but also... take effective action against al-Nusra," Hollande said, directing his appeal at Russia and the US.
On Wednesday, US President Barack Obama
We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us...
and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...agreed in a telephone call to "intensify" military coordination between their two countries in Syria.
Russia had in May proposed joint air strikes with the US against jihadist targets in Syria - a suggestion that was rebuffed by Washington.
The White House reported that the two leaders, in their call this week, "confirmed their commitment to defeating ISIS and the Al-Nusra Front."
The two groups are excluded from a broader truce brokered by Moscow and Washington in February.