“The US Secretary of State had come forward with a proposal to hold a meeting which focused only on the Syria crisis settlement in the context of the statement adopted by the International Syria Support Group in Munich”, she said.
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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has repeatedly urged Moscow since peace talks broke down in Geneva to halt its bombardments in Syria in support of Assad. He complained coordination hasn’t gone beyond an agreement to avoid in-air incidents.
“Interaction between the military bodies has been especially emphasized in order to implement the agreements reached within the framework of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG)”, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said after the meeting.
If its forces retake Aleppo and seal the Turkish border north of the city, Damascus would deal a crushing blow to the insurgents who were on the march until Russian Federation intervened, shoring up Assad’s rule and paving the way to the current reversal of rebel fortunes.
“We know that to find the path to peace again, the Russian bombing of civilians has to stop”, Valls told the conference.
“We’ve seen cases of redeployment of heavy armaments closer to the contact line… and multiple rocket launchers, artillery being used”, he said, referring to the heavy weaponry that is meant to be removed under the Minsk deal. Davutoglu said he expected Turkey’s “friends and our allies will stand by us”, a reference to the Obama administration that is at odds with Ankara over the approach toward the Kurds in Syria and Iraq.
“To date, the vast majority, in our opinion, of Russia’s attacks have been against legitimate opposition groups”.
Russia wants an amnesty for mainly Russian-speaking people in the east who seized government buildings during the upheaval of early 2014, when pro-European protesters toppled Russia-backed President Viktor Yanukovich.
The opposition “may be pushed back here and there, but they are not going to surrender”, Kerry said.
US State Department spokesman John Kirby said that the sides “went over plans for the organization and essential tasks of the task force charged to develop modalities for a cessation of hostilities in Syria”.
State TV and an opposition activist group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said troops captured Tamoura on Saturday amid intense shelling and airstrikes by Russian warplanes. More than 1 million Syrians are estimated to be in towns and districts that have been blockaded for weeks or months, either by government forces or the rebels.
Hezbollah-run Al-Manar TV said government troops are now overlooking Hayan and parts of Anadan.
The major powers clinched their deal on a pause in combat in late night talks in Munich on Friday, at a time when Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government is poised to score its biggest victory over rebels – in Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city before the war – with the backing of Russian air power.
Syria’s war has killed 250,000 people, wounded more than a million and displaced half the country’s population. The U.S. diplomat acknowledged that “many Europeans feel overwhelmed by the latest round of challenges, including concerns about the U.K.’s potential exit from the EU”.
“Saudi Arabia is now sending planes to Turkey, to Incirlik”.
Also on Saturday, Turkey announced it is coordinating with Saudi Arabia on a possible ground operation against “Islamic State” in Syria.
Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, was quoted in the Yeni Safak newspaper Saturday as saying that “Turkey and Saudi Arabia may launch an operation from the land” against IS, which holds a swathe of Syrian territory.
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AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee in Munich, Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Dominique Soguel in Istanbul contributed.
