Syrian President Bashar al-Assad also defended his key ally on Thursday, insisting that whatever American officials said “had no credibility” and were “just lies”.
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He called for the immediate grounding of planes and helicopters that have launched airstrikes, including a Russian one earlier this week that the US says hit an aid convoy, killing 20 civilians.
While the USA and Russian Federation have previously butted heads over several proposed resolutions critical of the Syrian government, Wednesday’s agenda didn’t even include a suggested course of action.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Mr Assad said the war, now in its sixth year, is likely to “drag on” because of what he said was continued external support for his opponents. Assad also suggested that the US, which leads a coalition against ISIS that has been conducting operations in Syria for two years, “doesn’t have the will” to work against ISIS and other extremist groups.
The top USA military officer, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate committee Thursday he believes Russia bombed the convoy and said Syrian and Russian aircraft were in the area at the time.
“I don’t believe the United States will be ready to join Russian Federation in fighting terrorists in Syria”, he said.
The United States said it believes it was carried out by a Russian-piloted aircraft. Instead, the two-hour discussion served as a warm-up act for a Thursday meeting blocks away in NY that will include Kerry, Lavrov and their counterparts from more than a dozen European and Arab countries.
“It was an unacceptable atrocity”, Dunford said of the deadly strike that killed around 20 civilians late Monday.
This was the first convoy to head towards a besieged area since Monday’s attack, Laerke told reported.
“Speaking to AP, Assad said: “[Rebel forces] have been shelling the neighbouring areas and the positions of the Syrian Army for years.
Russian Federation and the United States agreed on September 9 a deal aimed at putting Syria’s peace process back on track. They could tell the Assad regime not to fly, not to bomb, to engage with the whole negotiation.
Kerry says, “We can’t go out to the world and say we have an agreement when we don’t”. He maintained deadly airstrikes by the USA -led coalition on Syrian troops last weekend were intentional, dismissing American officials’ statements that they were an accident.
The UN has estimated that roughly 600,000 people are stuck in Syria’s 18 besieged areas. “It was four airplanes that kept attacking the position of the Syrian troops for almost one hour, or a little bit more than one hour”, Assad told the Associated Press (AP) on Wednesday.
Egeland said the United Nations also hoped to deliver aid to rebel-besieged towns of Foua and Kufreya in Idlib and government-blockaded Madaya and Zabadani near the Lebanese border within days.
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Russia has denied carrying out the strike, instead charging that the convoy was hit by a “terrorists’ pickup truck carrying a large-caliber mortar”, according to Russian state news agency Tass. “It is well-nigh impossible to solve any issue in Syria without Russian Federation or against its will”, says Margarete Klein from the German Institute for worldwide and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin.
