Iran is the main backer of Bashar al-Assad’s government, and has provided financial and military support to pro-government forces fighting in Syria. In March 2014, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) said of Putin, “That’s what you call a leader”. “There obviously remain sharp differences within the global community, especially about the future of President Assad”.
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The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution Friday that lays out a plan to bring peace to Syria.
The resolution called for the United Nations to present the council with options for monitoring a ceasefire within one month of its adoption.
Kerry also explained that talks between the Syrian opposition and government aimed at reaching agreement on a unity government were not likely to start before mid-January.
Foreign ministers from 17 countries were meeting in NY to push forward on a plan to launch the political transition to end Syria’s almost five-year war.
The New York Friday meeting comes following two rounds of talks held in the Austrian capital of Vienna on October 30 and November 14 to discuss settlement of the ongoing crisis in Syria.
Groups such as ISIL have also conquered large tracts of land, from where they have planned attacks on a number of states including France, Turkey, and Lebanon.
In a dig at Saudi Arabia, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote in The Guardian on Friday it was “utterly absurd that those who have denied their own population the most rudimentary tenets of democracy… are now self-declared champions of democracy in Syria”.
While maintaining its firm backing for Assad in public, Russian Federation has recently made clear to Western nations that it has no objection to him stepping down as part of the peace process, diplomats said.
The Syrian war, which is heading towards its fifth year, has killed more than 250,000 people, the BBC reports. Representatives of Syria’s opposition themselves hope this week to finalize their negotiating team for talks with Assad’s government.
Though the United States and its Arab allies still think that Assad should leave the office, Russian Federation insists that the decision should be left to the Syrian people.
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In fact, Michele adds, Russia’s foreign minister is trying to shape the negotiations by calling for a list of which rebel groups in Syria are terrorists and which can participate in negotiations with the Assad regime. “And the Russians have got to the point privately where they accept that Assad will have gone by the end of this transition, they’re just not prepared to say that publicly”.
