Face-to-face for the first time in almost a year, President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday will confront rising tensions over Moscow’s military engagement in Syria, as well as the stubborn crisis in Ukraine.
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Obama is expected to call for a political resolution to Syria’s civil war that includes Assad’s ouster.
HORSLEY: This will be the first meeting between Obama and Castro since the two countries opened their respective embassies in Havana and Washington, D.C. In a speech to the United Nations yesterday, Raul Castro called for the United States to drop its half-century old trade embargo against Cuba.
“We would welcome a common platform for collective action against the terrorists”, Putin told “60 Minutes” in an interview in Moscow aired Sunday. “There is only one legitimate army there and this is the army of Syrian President Assad.it is confronted by what some of our global partners interpret as the opposition”. Putin also accused the United States of providing military support to illegal structures “counter to the principles of modern worldwide law” and the UN Charter.
Ban said five countries “hold the key” to a political solution to Syria: Russian Federation, the USA, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran.
The Ukrainian leader said he expects Ukraine, the United States and the European Union to coordinate “a firm incentive for Putin to comply with the Minsk agreements”. Obama will address the body Monday morning, with Putin following shortly after.
A statement from the Iraqi military’s joint operations command on Saturday said the cooperation had come “with increased Russian concern about the presence of thousands of terrorists from Russia undertaking criminal acts with Daesh (Islamic State)”.
Mr Cameron – along with US President Barrack Obama and French President Francois Hollande – has previously demanded that Mr Assad be removed from power as a condition of any peace deal, a position consistently rejected by Mr Putin.
US intelligence officials estimate that the number of foreign fighters joining ISIS in Iraq and Syria has doubled in the past 12 months to 28,000 volunteers from over 100 countries.
Putin also said Russian Federation would continue to prop up Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad, but he denied Russian Federation was involved in the conflict militarily.
Russia’s intervention has forced a meeting between Putin and Obama in New York next week. However, only ten days ago, Kerry said that Assad is needed for Syria.
“Obviously conversations about how we bring about transition are very important and that’s what we need to see greater emphasis on”.
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Obama urged his fellow leaders to be ambitious, but he also warned that those efforts could be sidelined by ongoing conflicts and by things like discrimination against women.
