Share

Russian Federation agrees on Assad’s departure, UK Foreign Secretary Johnson says

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson with members of the Syrian High Negotiations Committee at talks in London this week.

Advertisement

“What Mr Lavrov has put on the table about Assad will not solve the problem”, Hijab said, accusing Moscow of using proscribed weapons to shore up Assad’s regime.

The fighting sent tens of thousands fleeing in the latest wave, part of a pattern that has displaced almost half of Syria’s population since the war began in 2011.

He said the case for political transition in Syria was so widely held that “even the Russians have accepted it”.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said the Syrian opposition was going further than before in outlining its vision for a post-Assad Syria.

The group’s general coordinator Riyad Hijab made these remarks while presenting on Wednesday its road map to a new political settlement for Syria in London.

Mr Assad would then hand over power to a unity government that would run Syria for 18 months and organise elections.

He says after 18 months there should be United Nations -supervised elections.

Mr Johnson highlighted the HNC plan for a six-month negotiating period between the regime and the opposition with a total ceasefire and humanitarian access.

The Foreign Secretary said Russia’s current approach to the conflict is keeping the Syrian president in power.

Reporting from the meeting in the United Kingdom capital, Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor James Bays said the plan was “the most detailed blueprint that the opposition has come up with of the way they see things going forward”.

Clearing Daesh along the Turkish border is “a very important strategic development in our overall campaign” to defeat the militant group, said the Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis on Tuesday. After talks on the sidelines of the G20 leaders’ summit in Hangzhou, China last week, the United States accused Russian Federation of pulling back on issues that Washington thought had been resolved.

Erdogan says: “Obama wants to do some things jointly concerning Raqqa”.

In remarks published on Wednesday Erdogan said Turkey would be ready to join any initiative proposed by the U.S. to capture DAESH’s stronghold in Syria.

“The vision is a response to the hopes and aims of the Syrian people – for emancipation from dictatorship; the establishment of a new social contract for Syria; building a political system that protects freedoms, safeguards individual rights and that is founded upon the principles of liberty, equality, citizenship, and justice”, Hijab said. Capturing the town would allow the Kurds to link up their main territory in northeastern Syria with an enclave they control in the northwest. The Russian and the Syrian air forces are the only two operating over Aleppo.

Advertisement

The U.N. agency, OCHA, said about half of the displaced from Hama have sought refuge in the province’s government-controlled capital, while the rest fled to neighboring rebel-held Idlib province.

The protracted war in Syria has killed tens of thousands of people and left millions displaced. Source Reuters