President Obama will welcome recently elected Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to the White House this winter, after the two met on the sides of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila, Philippines, on Tuesday.
“There are very few countries around the world that match the kinds of continuous, comprehensive friendship and partnership that we maintain with Australia,” Obama said during a joint appearance with Turnbull after their meeting.
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Obama noted Canberra’s position as the second-largest contributor to the 65-nation counter-Islamic State coalition, and as an “enormously helpful” partner in stabilizing and rebuilding Afghanistan.
“We’ve had a chance to talk not only about the continuing need to ramp up pressure against ISIL and our collaboration in reaching out to the Muslim world and working with them to prevent radicalization and to prevent the kinds of horrific terrorist attacks that we’ve seen most recently in Paris, but we’ve also had a chance to talk about how we can reach out to our own people and Muslim communities in order to ensure that they feel fully a part of American and Australian democracy,” Obama said.
Obama also noted that Australia, as a neutral observer like the United States in the South China Sea land disputes, can be a key ally in helping the region “uphold the basic principle that these issues should be resolved by international norms and rule of law and peacefully settled.”
The two also discussed trade, which will be the basis of conversation when Turnbull visits Washington for the first time this winter, Obama said.
Turnbull acknowledged that the Paris attacks consumed much of their time, as it did during the G-20 summit in Turkey over the weekend.
“[W]e will continue, shoulder-to-shoulder, with the United States and our allies in the fight against this type of extremist violence, this type of terrorism,” Turnbull said. “We have a common purpose and a common strategy.”
Turnbull said he and Obama were “shocked” by the Islamic State attacks that killed 129 Parisians on Friday.
“It was a sobering reminder of the threat that terrorism poses to us,” Turnbull said. “But there was comfort in this: Total solidarity and sympathy with the people of France; it was absolutely united,” he said of reaction at the G-20. “The leadership shown by the nations represented there was … solid.”
