President Barack Obama warned his Russian counterpart Tuesday against intervening in Syria’s civil war, suggesting that Vladimir Putin is aware of the dangers his country faces by entering the bloody conflict.
“I think Mr. Putin understands that … with Afghanistan fresh in the memory, for him to simply get bogged down in an inconclusive and paralyzing civil conflict is not the outcome that he’s looking for,” Obama said at a news conference in Paris.
Obama said he does not disagree with Putin on the necessity of a political resolution to Syria’s conflict. But he said there remains discord over the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Obama said he leaves the major climate change conference — that united world leaders in one city –confident in the forward trajectory of his ISIS strategy.
Speaking at the tail end of his visit to the French capital, Obama said he was “confident that we can continue building momentum and adding resources to our effort to degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State terror network that was responsible for last month’s Paris attacks.
Obama said hosting the climate conference amounted to a “remarkable display of resolve” for the French.
The President was one of nearly 150 world leaders gathering outside the city to agree on carbon reduction targets. He reiterated an urgent warning that countries move to curb global warning, claiming the consequences could be drastic.
“If we let the world keep warming as fast as it is, and sea levels rising as fast as they are, and weather patterns keep shifting in more unexpected ways, then before long we are going to have to devote more and more and more of our economic and military resources not to growing opportunity for our people but to adapting to the various consequences of a changing planet,” Obama said.