RFI journalist David Thomson points out that pro-IS accounts on Twitter had praised the reports of an attack on a French teacher in a Paris suburb by a man citing IS, saying that the attack had been under IS orders.
The only problem? The attack was made up and never happened, the Paris prosecutor is now saying.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has welcomed the reported withdrawal of Turkish troops from Camp Bashiqa in northern Iraq and urged Turkey to continue trying to cooperate with Baghdad, the White House said.
Biden told Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu that the troop withdrawal was an "important step to de-escalate recent tensions."
Russia's Foreign Ministry says Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has spoken with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry by telephone today to "synchronize chronometers" ahead of tomorrow's planned meeting and agree on a common agenda. The phone call was initiated by the United States, the Ministry adds.
The Ministry wrote in a statement on its website:
"The parties confirmed that, to convene a new meeting of the International Syria Support Group it is vital to ensure compliance with its November 14 decisions, which provide for the preparation of proposals for UN Special Representative Stefan de Mistura on the composition of the delegation of the Syrian opposition for talks with the Syrian government, and also agreement on a list of terrorist groups which must be fought against together."
Abu Mohammadal-Golani, the leader of Syrian's Al-Qaeda affiliate the Al Nusra Front, has lost support among Syrians after he gave an interview this weekend denouncing rebel factions participating in the Saudi sponsored Syrian opposition talks in Riyadh, Syria Direct reports.
U.S. President Obama is making a statement from the Pentagon to try to explain his strategy for stopping the IS group abroad and its sympathizers at home.
Some of Obama's main points:
-- Our strategy is moving forward and includes:
--- Hunting down and taking out these terrorists
--- Stopping IS recruiting and propaganda
--- Training Iraqi forces
--- Moving forward with political process
-- As we squeeze its heart we make it harder for IS to pump its terror into rest of world
-- Difficult fight, IS dug into civilian areas and uses civilians as human shields so we have to carry out strikes with precision
-- Nearly 9000 air strkes
--Last month we dropped more bombs than ever before
--We are also targeting and killing IS leaders including IS financial chief
-- IS leaders "cannot hide" and message to them is "you are next"
-- going after IS in Raqqa and in Libya
-- every day we destroy more of IS forces
-- In many places IS has lost its freedom of manuever
-- SInce summer IS has not had major succssful operation on the ground in Syria or Iraq
-- In recent weeks we are targeting sources of finance like oil fields
-- IS losing ground in Iraq including Sinjar, Baiji, etc
-- So far IS lost 40 percent of populated areas it once controlled in Iraq
-- Iraqi forces fighting to regain Ramadi
-- FIghters on ground face tough fight ahead and we are going to back them up
-- IS continues to lose ground in Syria
-- We are working with Turkey to seal border
-- IS lost thousands of square miles in Syria
-- More poeple are seeing IS as the thugs and thieves that they are
-- We recognize that progress needs to happen faster
-- Just as U.S. is doing more in this fight -- our allies Germany, UK, Australia are doing more
-- Secretary of State Kerry will be in Russia tomorrow to continue working on political process
Obama: U.S. Strategy Against IS Working, But Progress Must Be Faster
U.S. President Barack Obama said on December 14 that Islamic State (IS) militants have lost large swaths of territory that they once controlled in Iraq and Syria, but more progress needs to be made faster against the extremist group.
Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, Obama said he has tasked Defense Secretary Ash Carter with going to the Middle East to secure more military contributions from other countries in the U.S.-led coalition that is fighting against IS.
Working to easy public uneasiness ahead of the holidays, Obama held a meeting of his National Security Council at the Pentagon, a rare move, as part of a push aimed at explaining his strategy to stop IS militants abroad and the group’s sympathizers within the United States.
He told reporters after the Pentagon meeting that the U.S. strategy includes hunting down militant leaders, training security forces in other countries, and stopping the group's financing and propaganda.
Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP
That concludes our live-blogging of the crisis surrounding Islamic State for Monday, December 14. Check back here tomorrow for more of our continuing coverage.
From our news desk:
Kerry Begins Talks In Moscow On Syria, Ukraine
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has begun meetings in Moscow expected to touch on efforts for a political transition to end Syria's civil war and implementation of a peace deal in eastern Ukraine.
Kerry has started talks with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and will meet with President Vladimir Putin later on December 15.
The visit by the top U.S. diplomat comes ahead of a planned third round of Syria talks between world powers on December 18 in New York.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued late on December 14 that Kerry and Lavrov spoke by phone earlier in the day and agreed on the need for specific preconditions to be met before any new meeting, casting doubt on the timing of the planned New York meeting.
U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters in Washington the same day, however, that Kerry was traveling to Moscow "with the expectation that there are no preconditions to having this meeting."
The United States and its allies insist that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad cannot stay in power as part of a political resolution to the nearly 5-year-old civil war in Syria, where government forces are fighting both Islamic State (IS) militants and moderate opposition groups -- some backed by the U.S.-led coalition.
Russia rejects that position, saying it should be up to the Syrian people to choose their leader and that Assad's army is the force most capable of defeating IS fighters that control areas of Syria and Iraq.
At the start of his meeting with Lavrov in Moscow, Kerry said Washington and Moscow agree that IS "is a threat to everybody, to every country. They are the worst of terrorists. They attack culture and history and all decency."
Celeste Wallander, senior director for Russia and Central Asia on U.S. President Barack Obama’s National Security Council, told RFE/RL ahead of Kerry's talks with Putin that while the two sides' positions on Assad may not have "come closer," Washington sees the possibility of Russia's position "evolving such that we could agree."
"It's clear that there could be an agreement on a transition that meets U.S. and coalition requirements that Assad not be part of Syria's leadership, and those are the discussions that are under intensive focus right now," Wallander said in a December 11 interview.
A senior State Department official told reporters that "we don't have a full meeting of the minds yet" concerning Assad's future.
"We will talk about some of the details of a transition...in the hopes of narrowing the differences between us," Reuters quoted the unidentified official as saying on December 14.
The Associated Press cited an unidentified U.S. diplomat in Paris as saying that Russian and U.S. diplomats held a December 11 meeting primarily aimed at clearing up Russian "grievances" ahead of Kerry's meeting with Putin.
A meeting in Saudi Arabia last week agreed to unite several Syrian opposition groups, excluding IS militants, to negotiate with Assad's government in peace talks.
While Kerry said "kinks" still needed to be worked out on the plan to unite the Syrian opposition groups, the Kremlin rejected the outcome of the Riyadh meeting, saying it did not have the right to speak on behalf of the entire Syrian opposition.
Kerry arrived in Moscow from Paris, where he met with counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan to prepare for his talks with Putin and Lavrov.
Kerry and Putin are also set to discuss the implementation of the Minsk cease-fire accords, signed in February in the Belarusian capital, to halt violence between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine that the UN says has killed more than 9,000 people since April 2014.
"We're going to talk very extensively and very carefully about what's needed to implement the Minsk agreements," Wallander told RFE/RL last week.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in Washington on December 14 that Kerry will also encourage continued efforts by Russia to ease tensions with Turkey after Ankara shot down a Russian military plane near the Syrian border on November 24.
Kerry's trip is his second to Russia this year. He and Putin met in May in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. But it is the first since Russia launched a bombing campaign targeting armed groups fighting Assad in what Moscow has framed as a counterterrorist campaign.
The United States and its allies have accused Russia of bombing the moderate Syrian opposition and using its military intervention to prop up Assad rather than targeting IS positions -- criticism that Russia has rejected.
Obama has seen Putin briefly twice -- at international summits in Turkey and France -- since Russia began its air campaign in Syria in late September.
Saudi Arabia has announced the formation of a 34-state Islamic military coalition to combat terrorism, according to a joint statement published on state news agency SPA.
"The countries here mentioned have decided on the formation of a military alliance led by Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism, with a joint operations center based in Riyadh to coordinate and support military operations," the statement said.
The statement noted a list of Arab countries including Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Islamic countries including Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia and African states.