Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Li Baodong (second from left) and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (second from right) at the talks in Vienna on October 30.
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The Islamic Republic has given Assad’s government billions of dollars in aid and large amounts of weapons since fighting began.
The troop announcement came as diplomats in Vienna representing 17 countries and the European Union agreed to launch a broad new peace attempt to gradually end Syria’s long civil war – a declaration that avoided any determination on when President Assad might leave.
“I am so happy to see you, Nicolas”, Putin said warmly. “They pledged to continue and intensify support to the moderate Syrian opposition while the political track is being pursued”, the State Department said of the meeting, Reuters reported.
He stressed that despite the plan to deploy USA troops on the ground in Syria for the first time, the United States strategy in fighting the IS in Syria has not changed.
The fighting tempered any expectation of progress towards a political solution to the four-year civil war, with warring sides and their foreign backers refusing to back down in a conflict where the world’s major military powers except China are directly involved.
Washington has also provided support for the so-called moderate militant groups operating against the government of President Assad.
Air strikes by Turkish and US aircraft in Syria on Saturday killed more than 50 Islamic State militants, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency said on Sunday.
Russia’s Lavrov similarly said it was up to the Syrian people if Assad gets voted out.
“It was also agreed that the participants together with the United Nations will explore modalities for, and implementation of, a nationwide ceasefire to be initiated on a certain date and in parallel with this renewed political process”, said deputy FM, adding, “the participants will spend the coming days working to narrow remaining areas of disagreement, and build on areas of agreement”.
The Rebels Army group carried the statement from the coalition’s spokesman who goes by the name of Abu Ali as vowing to “cleanse Syria’s soil from the filth of terrorist groups”.
A senior official from the Middle East familiar with the Iranian position suggested Iran might go as far as ending support for Assad after the transition period.
U.S. special forces have been deployed in Syria before on one-off, secretive missions but this will be the first time they have been permanently stationed inside the country.
The measure would be part of a package of other steps to beef up the fight against Islamic State, including sending more warplanes to the region and discussing with Iraq the establishment of a special forces task force there.
He said the new UN-led process should lead to a new constitution for Syria and internationally supervised elections, as well as an end to violence between Assad’s military and rebels so that the world community can focus on the fight against ISIS.
But the U.S., Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab nations have long insisted that Mr Assad can not play a long-term role in Syria’s future. The SNC has presented itself as a “government-in-exile” for years, and seeks to be unconditionally installed as the new Syrian government.
There was no agreement on the fate of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Most died in government strikes on Douma, a town on the eastern edges of the capital, the Britain-based monitoring group said.
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The YPG was accused of war crimes in a recent report by Amnesty worldwide, which documented allegations that the group forcibly displaced Arabs and Turkmen and burned down villages perceived as cooperating with its opponents.
