U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will discuss the proposal in Moscow later Thursday.
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“Tonight, I can announce proudly that we will meet President [Barack] Obama’s goal of welcoming 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States in the current fiscal year”, he said at a reception to celebrate Eid al-Fitr.
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made a number of statements outlining the agenda for the talks with the US Secretary of State ahead of his visit and it seems that the talks will focus on distinguishing between the opposition and “terrorist groups”.
The talks in Moscow come less than three weeks before President Barack Obama’s August deadline for diplomatic progress expires.
Men look for survivors under the rubble of a damaged building after an airstrike on Aleppo’s rebel held Kadi Askar area, Syria July 8, 2016. Assad has reasserted control over more areas of the country he had once lost.
USA officials said no agreement with Moscow has yet been reached. “No one has any evidence”, Assad said.
“This could get a lot uglier”, he said at the time.
When Russia intervened in Syria last September, the administration took a different view, branding it a move of desperation and weakness.
This video includes images from the U.S. Department of State and Getty Images. There’s been little coordination between the two military forces other than efforts to avoid accidental targeting of each other’s planes.
While Russia’s unwilling to retreat on support for its ally, the U.S.is just hoping “to reduce violence in Syria to a less embarrassing and more manageable level”, said Faysal Itani, a fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington. The risk is that Obama’s outreach to Putin will strengthen Nusra by bolstering its credibility “and harm the entire opposition instead”, he said.
Reflecting Pentagon opposition to President Barack Obama’s initiative, Defense Secretary Ash Carter has little faith that Russian Federation can be trusted to abide by the agreement, CNN cited unidentified defense officials as saying.
It said Shell had a valid USA passport and visa to Russian Federation.
In Washington, many observers have criticized Kerry’s outreach to Russian Federation on Syria, arguing he has been strung along by a Putin seeking only to protect his client Assad. He’s watched the Syrian military and Russian air force violate truce after truce in recent months.
These will focus on the conflicts in Syria, Ukraine and the Azerbaijani region of Nagorny-Karabakh as Kerry battles to keep Moscow on board faltering global efforts to resolve them.
Opposition to the administration’s newest Syria plan is shared by a significant number of officials at the State Department, Pentagon and US intelligence community, according to several American officials.
For that reason, the US has nearly entirely avoided bombing Nusra targets in recent months.
US Secretary of State John Kerry is traveling to Russia to seek Moscow’s cooperation in the war against the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group in Syria, even as the two countries face worsening relations over the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine as well as NATO’s expansion to Russian borders.
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Two U.S. defense officials anticipated that Russian Federation would use enhanced U.S. coordination to divert the focus in Syria from ousting Assad toward weakening his opponents, including Jabhat al-Nusra, the Daily Beast reported.
