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Obama and Putin Discuss ISIS and Syria in Informal Conversation Obama Calls Paris Massacre ‘an Attack on the Civilized World’
(about 3 hours later)
ANTALYA, Turkey — President Obama and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia met face-to-face here on Sunday, broaching once again their longstanding disagreement about how to confront the Islamic State and deal with the civil war in Syria. ANTALYA, Turkey — President Obama on Sunday sought to stoke in American allies a new sense of urgency in the fight against the Islamic State, even as his top aides made clear that Friday’s horrific attacks in Paris would not alter the president’s reluctance to substantially escalate his campaign against the terror group.
The two men huddled for 35 minutes on a pair of couches during a reception for world leaders gathered here for the Group of 20 summit meeting, just days after the terrorist attacks in Paris. Meeting with world leaders in Turkey less than 48 hours after gunmen and suicide bombers killed at least 129 people in simultaneous attacks across Paris, Mr. Obama vowed to stand with the French authorities as they hunt down the terrorists, calling the spasms of violence in the center of the city “an attack on the civilized world.”
American officials described the conversation as “constructive” and emphasized that the two leaders had agreed on the need for a cease-fire in Syria and a political transition to a new government. White House officials said Mr. Obama agreed wholeheartedly with President François Hollande of France that the mass killings in Paris were an “act of war.” They promised that the United States would intensify the military campaign against the Islamic State even as they accelerated their pursuit of a diplomatic solution to the civil war raging inside Syria.
“The conversation lasted approximately 35 minutes and centered around ongoing efforts to resolve the conflict in Syria, an imperative made all the more urgent by the horrifying terrorist attacks in Paris,” an American official said. Yet the highly emotional statements from France — in which Mr. Hollande promised to be “merciless” and the prime minister, Manuel Valls, vowed to “annihilate the enemies of the republic” — appeared to do little to fundamentally change how Mr. Obama or his national security team views the high costs of significantly widening the role of the United States military in Iraq and Syria.
But Russian officials described the meeting in less glowing terms, saying that Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin remained at odds over how to achieve those goals. While Mr. Obama was already moving to intensify bombing and the targeting of Islamic State leaders, he still does not appear ready to question the underlying, incremental approach.
“The strategic goals concerning the battle with ISIS, in principle they are very close to each other,” Yuri V. Ushakov, a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Putin, told reporters. “But on tactics, the two sides are currently diverging.” Senior national security advisers said the president remained steadfastly opposed to a large-scale ground operation in Iraq and Syria. And even as he met with world leaders, aides insisted that the Americans had not underestimated the ability of the Islamic State to project its terror beyond that region.
That would leave the two leaders in essentially the same place they have been for years when it comes to Syria. Mr. Obama has criticized Mr. Putin’s deployment of Russian forces in Syria, while Mr. Putin has defended the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, in the face of American calls for his departure. In briefings with reporters in Turkey and in a series of back-to-back appearances on Sunday morning television programs, Benjamin J. Rhodes, the president’s deputy national security adviser, said the United States would work with France and other allies to “intensify their efforts” against the Islamic State — but only within limits.
The meeting between the two leaders had not been planned, but aides to Mr. Obama had suggested that they would probably try to find time to talk informally. The scene Sunday afternoon was captured by a closed-circuit television camera and shown to reporters in a nearby hotel. “We don’t believe U.S. troops are the answer to the problem,” Mr. Rhodes told reporters at the Group of 20 meetings here. “The further introduction of U.S. troops to fully re-engage in ground combat in the Middle East is not the way to deal with this challenge.”
The conversation appeared to be animated, with both men leaning in as they used their hands to punctuate their discussion. Mr. Obama’s arrival at the G-20 summit meeting Sunday morning forced him and his advisers to spend the day carefully balancing two competing interests: their desire to support France at an extraordinarily difficult moment, while standing firm in their defense of Mr. Obama’s basic strategy for waging war against terrorists.
They sat on dark-colored couches and were joined by Susan E. Rice, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, and another man who appeared to be acting translating the conversation. Aides said the president had discussed the need for more cooperation with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, especially along the border between Turkey and Syria. And the last-minute addition of a meeting between Mr. Obama and King Salman of Saudi Arabia was described as an effort to urge more from the kingdom.
The relationship between Mr. Putin and Mr. Obama has grown increasingly tense, especially since the Russian president began an air campaign in Syria just days after a tense conversation with Mr. Obama during the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September. White House officials on Sunday, however, rejected any notion that the administration had underestimated the threat posed by the Islamic State several years ago. And they defended Mr. Obama’s comment last week that the terrorist group had been “contained” in recent months by the United States and its coalition in Iraq and Syria.
Mr. Obama made that comment in an interview with ABC News just hours before the Paris attacks, which seemed to dramatically demonstrate that the group was not contained within the borders of Syria and Iraq.
“A year ago, we saw them on the march in both Iraq and Syria, taking more and more population centers,” Mr. Rhodes said on “This Week” on ABC News. “The fact is we have been able to stop that geographic advance and take back significant amounts of territory in both northern Iraq and northern Syria.”
Mr. Obama and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia again broached their longstanding disagreement about how to confront the Islamic State and resolve the civil war in Syria. The two men spoke for 35 minutes on a pair of couches during a reception on the gathering’s first day.
American officials described the meeting as “constructive” and emphasized that the two leaders agreed on the need for a cease-fire in Syria and a political transition to a new government. But Russian officials described the meeting in less glowing terms, saying Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin remained at odds about how to achieve those goals.
White House officials said the Paris attacks had prompted a higher level of cooperation with French officials in the fight against the Islamic State. Mr. Rhodes said France now had a two-star general stationed in the headquarters of United States Central Command, which is coordinating the American airstrikes in Syria and Iraq.
“The French have been with us in Iraq and Syria and conducting airstrikes,” he said on ABC. “I think we want to continue to intensify that coordination.”
But Mr. Rhodes and other officials were less clear about what that higher intensity would include. And while no one in the French government has yet said publicly that France would take the next logical step and request other NATO member countries to defend it under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, many experts were talking about the need for joint action.
A senior American defense official said the military already had a range of options prepared after 18 months of near continual debate within the administration about how to handle the Islamic State. The options range from substantive ground operations — which no one appears to be seriously considering at this point — to ramping up the air war or increasing the number of special operations troops already committed to Syria by the administration.
The Pentagon is also working out ways to accommodate a more robust French role in the air campaign, the official said, though it was not yet certain what course of action France had decided upon. The administration also wants to make sure it has thought through the impact that any new military action would have on the diplomatic efforts to open a peace process that Secretary of State John Kerry is leading.
“It’s a matter of making sure it’s all been thought out,” added the defense official, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters. “If it looks like a shift in our posture would be beneficial in terms of diplomacy, or would have a negative impact, that is something that the administration wants to consider.”
A senior administration official involved in the debate over how to counter the Islamic State said in a conversation over the weekend that while the president had declared the mission to “degrade and defeat” the Islamic State, “what we had in essence was a containment policy.” It was based on Mr. Obama’s longtime belief that any effort to counter the Islamic State’s ideology had to be led by Sunni Muslim states, with backup from the United States for the “unique capabilities” it can offer: mostly air support and intelligence.
Yet Mr. Obama’s strategy was also based on intelligence assessments that the Islamic State was overextended, that it was vulnerable to a cutoff in its oil and black-market revenues, and that in the long war against extremism there was still time to bolster the most capable local forces and bring Arab states to the fight.
The official said that “if Paris changes anything, it’s the recognition that we can’t wait for those two events to happen, if they ever happen.”