The opposition groups launched an offensive last week in northern Hama, an area of strategic importance to President Bashar al-Assad that is home to loyalist towns populated by minority Christians and Alawites.
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The two leaders conversed on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit here for ninety minutes, a senior U.S. official said, and worked to clarify gaps in negotiations over on the Syrian crisis.
Obama called Turkey a key ally in the campaign to defeat the Islamic State and said “we now need to finish the job” of securing Turkey’s border with Syria.
“And this is also the commitment and the responsibility of the worldwide community to work and help us in preventing death to our children”.
It would ensure that government fighters pulled back in some areas, including around Aleppo, to allow convoys of humanitarian aid to reach civilians caught in the fighting.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al Jubeir was at the meeting in London.
Johnson said the proposals would not seek to sweep away state structures, saying this was a mistake committed following the US-led invasion of Iraq that would not be repeated.
Foreign ministers from the Friends of Syria group were hosted by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who pledged to intensify Britain’s efforts to resolve the Syrian crisis.
Mr Johnson described it as a “formidably important document” which represents “a vision and plan for Syria that is democratic, pluralistic, that will take that country forward”.
The political settlement blueprint sets up a gradual government transition by initiating a six-month cease-fire for negotiations and full humanitarian access following five years of civil war.
“And of course there is widespread agreement across the world that he must go, including with the Russians, there has been less clarity about the post-Assad vision for Syria”.
The UK foreign secretary has said that Bashar al-Assad must be ousted as part of any peace deal in war-ravaged Syria.
Since then, more than a quarter of a million victims have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to the UN. He added that nations have enough to worry about in the realm of cyber attacks from non-state actors without nation-states engaging in hacking against one another.
Hospitals in Aleppo are overwhelmed by the number of wounded. Worldwide inspectors determined in August that the Syrian government and Islamic State militants were responsible for chemical attacks in 2014 and 2015. Russian Federation is insisting that opposition forces be separated from the militants.
In remarks published on Wednesday Erdogan said Turkey would be ready to join any initiative proposed by the USA to capture DAESH’s stronghold in Syria.
But the diplomatic efforts were unsuccessful, Obama said at a press conference on Monday.
“Our president said he was leaning towards it”.
Differences between the two sides are technical, the official indicated, suggesting the divide was at a level that Obama and Putin wouldn’t negotiate themselves.
“We feel we have to move to a new phase, and the new phase can not happen without a political transition and the political seriousness that will compel the regime and its allies”.
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“If what the Russians and the Americans agree upon is very much different from what the Syrians aspire to, then we shall not accept it”, Hijab said.
