Putin Urges U.N. to Help Coordinate Fight Against ISIS

Russian president tells General Assembly the U.S. effort against Syria’s Assad is ‘enormous mistake’.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday he will launch discussions on a United Nations resolution aimed at coordinating international efforts to fight Islamic State militants.

In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, which came hours before his first formal meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in more than two years, Mr. Putin attacked Western policies in the Middle East, including U.S. and European opposition to the Assad regime in Syria. He called for a broad coalition against Islamic State.

“First of all, we propose discussing whether it is possible to agree on a resolution aimed at coordinating the actions of all the forces that confront Islamic State and other terrorist organizations,” he said.

Last year, Washington launched its own coalition to fight Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. However, the main backers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Iran and Russia, criticized that effort and kept their distance from what has so far been a stuttering campaign.

U.S. and Russian officials held talks Sunday in New York to try to forge a common approach to fighting Islamic State. However, Russia has stepped up its military presence in the region. Iraq’s Defense Ministry said Sunday the country had signed an intelligence and security cooperation pact with Russia, Iran and Syria, pledging to cooperate in collecting and sharing information about Islamic State.

In recent weeks, Russia has deployed new military assets in Syria, including fighter aircraft and attack helicopters in the coastal region of Syria.

Mr. Putin denied Russia’s Syrian buildup amounts to Moscow’s new “global ambitions.” He said the action was intended to counter a growing terrorist threat from Islamic State—not only in the Middle East, but also against his own country and other Western nations through the return of foreign fighters from Syria and Iraq.

“On the basis of international law, we must join efforts to address the problems that all of us are facing and create a genuinely broad international coalition against terrorism,” Mr. Putin said.

Mr. Putin lambasted years of U.S. policy in the Middle East. He blamed the rise of Islamic State, the waves of migration from the region and conflicts elsewhere on the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and Western-led action against the Gadhafi regime in Libya in 2011.

These campaigns, he said, along with what he called the export of “so-called” democratic revolutions, ended in “violence, poverty and social disaster.”

“I cannot help asking those who have caused this situation, do you realize now what you have done?” he said.

More From The Wall Street Journal (subscription required):