During the brief conversation with reporters at Capitol Hill, America’s top diplomat also took issue with anti-refugee sentiments expressed by USA lawmakers and governors.
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In a separate statement, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said that its head Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry had a phone talk and discussed the need for joint efforts to combat IS in Syria and the need for talks between Damascus and opposition.
Speaking about seaborne strikes, Russian defence minister Sergey Shoigu said: “On November 20, the warships of the Caspian Fleet launched 18 cruise missiles at seven targets in the provinces of Raqqa, Idlib and Aleppo”. “It’s certainly a good thing for us and a good thing for France if we have a more coordinated approach toward these airstrikes in Syria”, said Karen Donfried, a former White House adviser to Obama who is now the president of the German Marshall Fund of the US.
The attacks that killed 129 people in Paris, the bombing of a Russian airliner that claimed more than 200 lives and deadly attacks claimed by Islamic State in Lebanon and elsewhere have boosted the resolve of major powers to crush the militants.
But Obama insisted Syrians would not accept Assad staying in power, after a brutal civil war that has seen his regime carry out indiscriminate attacks on civilians.
With this in mind, French President Francois Hollande will meet President Putin and US President Obama next week.
“We have never blocked anything (at the UN Security Council), as far as sensible initiatives based on global law are concerned”, she said.
Because Obama has suspended formal U.S.-Russia military ties, coordination in the fight can only go so far – even if Moscow sharpens its focus on IS.
Did Vladimir Putin just trick himself into solving Syria’s war?
And those two governments have been coordinating on deconfliction – alerting each other in advance of strikes to avoid potential collisions in Syrian airspace.
“If we talk after that, one year and a half to two years is enough for any transition”. United States diplomatic sources have already noted that the European Union sanctions imposed on Russian Federation after their invasion of Ukraine are due to be renewed in January and could be part of any diplomatic bargain.
We saw the first slight signs of a shift on this point at Syrian peace talks in Vienna, where the USA signaled a few patience on the subject of Assad’s future.
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Flynn suggested in a recent Al Jazeera interview that the Obama administration knew that its arming of extremist rebels in Syria would lead to the creation of an Islamic State group but willfully continued and supported the establishment of such a Salafist principality because it would further help the West in its effort to oust Assad.
