It is hoped the new truce, which will be implemented as of next week will allow humanitarian aid through Syria, where a lot of innocent people are in need of help.
Advertisement
There’s no question now that the people who were previously threatened by [Syrian President Bashar] Assad and by ISIS are now threatened by the Russians, as well.
In Syria, tens of thousands of people forced to flee their homes around Aleppo were running out of sanctuaries as the fighting pressed further north. Turkish officials stood by a decision to keep the border closed and to focus on a new camp for displaced people on the Syrian side.
The first peace talks in two years between belligerents in Syria collapsed last week before they began in the face an the offensive by President Bashar Al Assad’s forces, one of the biggest and most consequential of the five-year war.
A United Nations task force, co-chaired by Russian Federation and the USA, will work over the coming week “to develop the modalities for a long-term, comprehensive and durable cessation of violence”, Kerry said.
Last Friday, Britain’s Financial Times reported that United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon had attributed the breakdown of the talks in Geneva to the Russian airstrikes in Aleppo.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry chat during a meeting of the International Syrian Support Group in Munich, Germany.
Medvedev criticized Western powers’ refusal to collaborate with Russian Federation in Syria.
“Our airspace forces will continue working against these organisations”, he said.
“Our colleagues are becoming more and more aware of the need of such cooperation and we’re happy about that”, he said.
He called on the USA and its allies to pressure opposition groups to “cooperate fully” with the UN-sponsored deal.
“We have to think ahead in the event that doesn’t work”, Mr. McGurk said of the Munich talks.
Under the draft plan as it stood early Thursday, Russia would take responsibility for humanitarian airdrops, avoiding potential problems of US or allied military aircraft flying over combat zones in sovereign Syrian territory.
Two Syrian women and a boy wait in front of Oncupinar crossing gate, near the town of Kilis, to return to Syria on February 9, 2016. Riyadh is also determined to push back Iran’s reach into Syria.
Lavrov said peace talks should resume in Geneva as soon as possible and that all Syrian opposition groups should participate.
What he envisions a week from now, Kerry said, “is a pause”.
There has been disagreement for years over whether “transition” requires Assad to leave power, as Western countries have been demanding in vain since 2011.
The Prime Minister also criticized Europe’s handling of the migrant crisis.
The US Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, presented in Brussels a detailed plan for a new phase of the anti-ISIS campaign in Syria and Iraq, focusing mostly on regaining Mosul and Raqqa.
Konashenkov denied that Russian Federation was bombing civilians, saying that “no matter how long one baits terrorists, they will not become opposition members”. They are taking a political risk because they are accepting a negotiation in which they are committing to a cessation of hostilities.
Advertisement
“If in a week there is no change due to their bombing, then they will bear the responsibility”.
