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...
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