European diplomat says French president will try to impress on Obama that world cannot afford to wait for two-year war of attrition in wake of Paris attacks

François Hollande will plead with Barack Obama to show greater urgency in the fight against Islamic State when the presidents meet in Washington next week, warning of a state of emergency in Europe.



French officials have been careful not to openly criticise the US’s strategy in Syria and Iraq but believe Obama must be made aware of the extent of the refugee crisis it has caused, a European diplomat said on Wednesday.

“The message that we want to send to the Americans is simply that the crisis is destabilising Europe,” said the diplomat, who did not wish to be named. “The problem is that the attacks in Paris and the refugee crisis show that we don’t have time. There is an emergency.”

Noting the debate raging among governments over how to handle the biggest movement of people to Europe since the second world war, he added: “It’s the foreign fighters but it’s also the migrants crisis which is dividing the Europeans, destabilising the continent, so we have to act quickly, telling the US administration the core interests of the Europeans, your best allies, are at stake.”

As Paris reels from the terrorist attacks that killed 129 people last week, Hollande will try to impress on Obama that there is a need to act now and the world cannot afford to wait for a war of attrition that might take two years. Some insiders believe that America has been slow to appreciate the effects of millions of refugees pouring out of Syria, partly because the US is an ocean away and far less vulnerable.

The European diplomat said: “That’s the reason why the French president will be in Washington on Tuesday before flying to Moscow to meet President Putin.”

France wants world leaders to redefine the strategy for taking on Isis and give it a greater sense of urgency.

The diplomat indicated that Europe supported the broad effort to cut off funding and the supply line of foreign fighters to Isis, but he rejected any notion of sending in ground troops, commenting: “Isis is dreaming about having western forces against them.”

Elsewhere, John Kerry, the US secretary of state, who returned from Paris on Tuesday, attempted to manage international expectations. He told the Overseas Security Advisory Council in Washington: “Let me make this clear: we don’t have any illusions about how complicated this is. Most people don’t think that another invasion by Americans in yet another Muslim country in which the local citizens are not prepared to fight back and hold the land that you then gain makes a lot of sense, which is why our strategy – and there is a strategy and it is clear and it’s working, not as fast as anybody would like, but working.”

US military officials also sought to defend the slow pace of coalition efforts against Isis, as the Pentagon conceded Isis was in places providing “very stiff resistance” but detailed its painstaking efforts to avoid civilian casualties.



Amid growing calls from politicians in Washington for tougher military intervention, the US administration is anxious to demonstrate that its strategy of relying on local forces in Syria and Iraq to flush Isis fighters out into the open for airstrikes is still making progress.

“It’s important for everyone to understand our overarching objective, which is to partner with indigenous ground forces, enable [them] to conduct offensive operations and then provide coalition air power on top,” Defense Department spokesman Steve Warren told reporters.

“As indigenous forces manoeuvre against our enemy, it forces our enemy to move, they have to react, and as soon as the enemy reacts we kill them from the air.”

But the Pentagon described Iraqi army efforts to retake Ramadi, where it enjoys a 10-to-1 numerical advantage over Isis, as “slow and incremental”, despite increased allied air support.

“The northern axis has met with some very stiff resistance, frankly,” said Warren. “The enemy has put up a good fight there in the last couple of days. I think it was about a 200-metre movement yesterday. This is slow and sometimes incremental work.”

US officials say the discovery of nearly 30 improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on the outskirts of the city had “blunted” Iraqi advances.

The Pentagon also boasted that coalition-trained rebels in Syria were now fighting Isis in the south of the country for the first time, but said the mortar raid had destroyed only “five buildings and a weapon cache”.

Asked why it had taken so long to hit Isis’s oil export infrastructure, US officials described how it had taken some time to draw up a plan that would not kill the drivers of fuel tankers used by Isis to export Syrian oil.

A series of videos were shown of the trucks being blown up on Sunday, but US planes used in the attack had conducted dummy strafing runs and dropped leaflets in advance in order to scare away the drivers, who took shelter in a tent that was left untargeted.

Warren also explained that the reason the French had been given new targets for their bombing raids in Raqqa was because Isis headquarters buildings previously targeted by the Americans had been moved to alternative locations after initial strikes.

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The Pentagon official criticised Russian airstrikes on Raqqa as using “outdated” bombing tactics that risked causing unnecessary civilian deaths.

The Pentagon briefing for reporters came as Republican critics in the US stepped up their calls for more robust intervention and American ground troops.

“America has had enough of empty words, of declarations detached from reality of an administration with no strategy or no intention of victory,” said Republican presidential contender Jeb Bush in a foreign policy speech to a military college in Charleston, South Carolina.

“The United States should not delay in leading a global coalition to take out Isis with overwhelming force.”

Bush said that while air power was “essential, it alone cannot bring the results we seek”.

“The United States – in conjunction with our Nato allies and more Arab partners – will need to increase our presence on the ground,” he added. “When we do use force, it must be effective, and our objectives must be well defined, so that one deployment doesn’t lead to endless others – always with the heavy thumb of American power, resources and resolve on the scales of war.”

In a new radio ad, Bush’s rival Donald Trump explicitly mentioned the Paris attacks as proof that “America needs to get tough on radical Islamic terrorism”.

Trump, who has called himself the “most militaristic person there is”, pledged to “quickly and decisively bomb the hell out of Isis”. The businessman and reality TV star also accused Obama of “preparing to let hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria into the United States” and promised: “If I win we will not have to listen to politicians that are losing the war on terrorism.”