France’s Hollande: Assad has no role in Syria solution

French President Francois Hollande maintained his tough stance on Bashar Assad at the United Nations General Assembly on Monday, insisting the Syrian leader has no role in a political solution to his country’s crisis.

“Russia and Iran say they want to be part of a solution,” he said, referring to Assad’s main foreign allies. “So we must work with these countries to explain to them that the route to a solution does not go through Bashar al-Assad.”

Syria took center stage as world leaders addressed the UN on Monday, with US President Barack Obama, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Jordanian King Abdullah II and Hassan Rouhani of Iran all devoting a sizeable chunk of their speeches to the years-long conflict that has left 250,000 people dead and millions more displaced.

Earlier on Monday, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said that France would continue carrying out “more strikes” against the Islamic State group in Syria.

“There will be more strikes, there will be more actions to protect ourselves, to prevent these training camps for foreign combatants from continuing and training terrorist actors who will come to France, or Europe, to attack us,” he said on France’s BFMTV.

France carried out its first air strikes in Syria on Sunday, when six French warplanes hit an IS training camp near the eastern city of Deir Ezzor.

“We struck militarily an extremely sensitive site for (IS),” he said, describing it as a “strategic hub” for militants travelling between Iraq and Syria, which also has significant petrol resources.

“We have proof that in the training camps of [IS] in Syria, foreign combatants are preparing, organizing themselves not to go fight in the Levant but to carry out attacks in Europe and on our own territory,” Le Drian added.

France has been part of the US-led coalition bombarding IS targets in Iraq since September 2014, and has carried out 215 out of nearly 4,500 strikes there, according to French and US figures.

But until now it limited its air strikes on the extremist group to Iraqi territory.

Hollande has been under political pressure to take action against IS after a series of jihadist attacks in France, and fears over hundreds of citizens who have gone to wage jihad who could return home battle-hardened and vengeful.

The United States and its coalition partners including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain and the UAE have carried out more than 2,500 air strikes in Syria, according to US figures.