WH: France support of airstrikes is ‘significant’

The White House on Thursday applauded the announcement from French President François Hollande that France would conduct airstrikes in conjunction with the U.S. against Islamic State in Iraq in Syria (ISIS) targets in Iraq.

“That is a significant contribution to the efforts of the growing international coalition to combat ISIL, and we look forward to coordinating closely with our French partners in the days to come,” press secretary Josh Earnest said, using another name for the group.

{mosads}Hollande said Thursday that French ground troops would not enter Iraq, and that the French air force would not target sites inside of Syria. But the announcement that Paris was authorizing bombing of ISIS targets is nevertheless a diplomatic win for the White House, which has characterized gathering a broad coalition of international partners as crucial to its counterterrorism strategy.

The French president told reporters that bombing would begin “as soon as we have identified targets,” according to Reuters.

“That means in a short time frame,” Hollande said. “It will be air support to protect Iraqi soldiers and Kurdish Peshmerga forces to reduce and weaken this terrorist group.”

Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been fielding questions about how significant the contributions of coalition partners will be during testimony on Capitol Hill this week, told a House panel on Thursday he “obviously welcome[d]” the announcement and that France was “one of the countries that we’ve been counting in on this.”

The French had previously announced they were conducting surveillance flights over Iraq and providing fighters to Kurdish forces battling ISIS in northern Iraq.

Earnest sidestepped questions about whether the U.S. was hoping to convince Paris to expand its military effort to include flights in Syria.

“I’m certainly not going to speak for the commander in chief of the French military for the steps they are going to take,” Earnest said.