French press review 24 November 2015

French President Francois Hollande hastens efforts to build a large military coalition against ISIS;  the state of the army's readiness for war; and the burden the expedition brings to the country's overstretched military.

DR

France’s war on terror remains everyone’s front page spread for yet another day and President Francois Hollande is determined as ever in his bid to form a coalition against the Islamic State armed group.

Le Monde takes up a very hectic Monday in Paris marked by British Prime Minister David Cameron’s condolence visit to Mr. Hollande at the Elysée from where both leaders proceeded to lay roses at the Bataclan concert hall, where most of the terrorists' victims were killed.

According to the evening paper, Cameron reassured Hollande of his support and determination to convince Westminster about the imperative of military intervention in Syria.

Le Monde also explores President Hollande’s diplomatic marathon that will take him to a meeting with US President Obama in Washington today, German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Paris tomorrow, a shuttle to Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, before returning home on Friday to host Chinese leader Xi
Jinping. It will be a hard sell says the paper, as Hollande embarks on the tricky mission of establishing a war strategy with partners who do not share the same objectives.

For Le Monde, the United States, like the Golf States, are not ready to accept the maintenance of Russian and Iran-backed President Basha al-Assad in power in Damascus for the sake of fighting against ISIS.

For Le Figaro, President Hollande’s hardest sell will be to convince a reticent Barack Obama of the viability of an alliance with Vladimir Putin against ISIS while at the same time getting the Kremlin to stop targeting the Syrian rebels allied with the Western coalition.

As France’s flagship aircraft carrier, Charles de Gaulle and its 26 fighter jets docked in the Mediterranean are to begin a military mission against the ISIS group also known as Daesh, Le Figaro says its job is will be to strike the group and strike hard across the board.

For the paper, France should not hesitate to use overwhelming force, adding that the terrorists need to be reminded that the fortification of streets by the army and the police need not be the sole picture the barbarians need to see to know that there will be no place for them to hide.

L’Humanité is urging President Francois Hollande to use the large coalition he seeks for peacebuilding and not content itself with wiping out the life-hating fanatics who spilled blood in the City of Lights.

For the Communist party daily, it is necessary to avoid perpetrating the cycle of wars, because it weakens peoples and strengthens the hands of evil groups as proven by the military expeditions in Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq, then Libya and now Syria which has landed back on our faces like a boomerang.

Is France engaged on too many fronts? That’s a question La Croix opted to raise in today’s lead article as it questions the additional burden that the Syrian expedition is certain to bring on a country already outstretched by its presence in the Sahel. The Catholic daily says President Hollande’s declaration of war against ISIS and a freeze of job cut in the army didn’t go unnoticed in the military.

La Croix quotes defence ministry sources as saying that troop levels had dropped from 450,000 in the 1990s to 202,000 today with the defence ministry’s budget sanctuarised at 32 billion euros, running up to 2019. According to the Catholic daily, Mr. Hollande can’t afford the 10,000 job cuts originally planned for the military, which means that he will have to raise 5 billion euros in supplementary funds for their upkeep over the period contrary to initial budget ceilings.