‘Only the Syrian people define who’s going to be the president, when to come, and when to go.
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According to NBC, Assad said that a candidate without significant experience is “dangerous for the country generally”, in an apparent shot at likely Republican nominee Trump, the real estate giant and television star who has never held elected office.
But there has been little progress towards a resumption of talks that had been expected to take place this month.
While Washington and Moscow share the goal of defeating ISIS, they don’t trust each other and are at odds on large questions such as a post-war Syria and whether it should include President Bashar Assad.
De Mistura said he hoped Washington and Moscow could help reduce the “non-constructive ambiguity” surrounding the Al-Nusra Front.
Jan Egeland, who chairs the United Nations weekly humanitarian task force, said fighting had prevented access to besieged areas and that the government continued to remove medical supplies from aid convoys.
“The U.S. are seeking to reboot bilateral talks on Syria in order to focus them on political issues, providing them with the opportunity to switch the power from Assad to a new opposition-backed authority”, foreign policy expert Vladimir Frolov told The Moscow Times.
Kerry’s spokesman John Kirby told reporters his boss was “extremely frustrated” with the failure of peace efforts and “his patience was growing thin”.
Since Russia intervened militarily, Syria has retaken a significant amount of territory.
Both the Islamic State and the Al-Nusra Front are defined as terrorist groups by the UN Security Council, and they are not party to the much-breached ceasefire in place between Assad’s forces and more moderate rebel groups.
On Thursday alone six Tupolev bombers flew out of an airbase in Russian Federation and conducted strikes east of Palmyra, near the cities of Arak and Sukhna, as well as in the Homs region, it said.
The Syrian government has contended that its attacks targeted “terrorists”.
The UN envoy further declined to comment on a recent Washington Post report that the U.S. was proposing increased cooperation and intelligence-sharing with Russian Federation against Daesh terrorists and al-Qaeda militants in Syria. And yet, despite those calls to stop fighting, just over the weekend, with the help of Russian air strikes, the Syrian army claimed control of Castello Road, a key rebel route out of Aleppo.
Russian Federation has said it supports the idea of “transition” but has never spoken publicly of the need for Mr Assad to resign.
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The counter-argument is that the USA has no good options in Syria, and cooperating with Russian Federation to pound ISIS is the most practical way to work toward ending of the war.
