However, US President Barack Obama and Russia’s Vladimir Putin gave starkly different takes on the conflict in their speeches to the UN General Assembly.
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Iran piled on behind Russian Federation, but Western leaders remained adamant that Mr Assad must step down and Mr Obama branded him a child-killing tyrant whose actions had fuelled the jihadists’ rise.
Putin’s statement on U.S Support Policy for Syrian Rebels: “In my opinion, provision of military support to illegal structures runs counter to the principles of modern global law and the United Nations Charter”.
On Monday, Obama will deliver his annual address to the gathering of world leaders, which brings gridlocked traffic and various global pariahs to the east side of Manhattan yearly.
He said that his country will continue to work closely with the U.S.-led coalition that has been bombing the IS group in Syria and Iraq, saying Iraq needs “all the world’s intelligence efforts in order to fight, to besiege and to terminate Daesh”.
“We think it is an enormous mistake to refuse to cooperate with the Syrian government and its armed forces, who are valiantly fighting terrorism face to face”, Putin said.
“We have named the participants: Russian Federation, the United States, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt”, Bogdanov said, adding that others could also be invited.
In his speech, Putin was expected to emphasise Russia’s efforts to resolve the Syrian civil war and combat the Islamic State extremist group, contrasting it with the US-led military campaign in Iraq and Syria.
What’s left to do now is to try to restore the central government in Libya and those in Iraq and Syria. Without naming the United States, he said a “single centre of dominance has emerged after the end of cold war”, and attempts have been made to revise the UN role.
“Given the situations in Ukraine and Syria, despite our profound differences with Moscow, the President believes that it would be irresponsible not to test whether we can make progress through high-level engagement with the Russians”, the official said. He said the Syrian military was the only force truly fighting Isis militants in the country.
The strikes won’t defeat the Islamic State, but they are keeping its leadership off balance, a senior defense official involved in planning them said. And I have to say I do not have patience for the excuse of, ‘Well, we have our own ways of doing things’.
The news comes amid US concerns about Russia’s recent military buildup in Syria and would appear to confirm American suspicions of some kind of cooperation between Baghdad and Moscow.
Washington insists Mr Assad, of the minority Alawite group, must leave power before any settlement to the conflict, while European powers seem to be softening their stance, signalling he could stay on in an interim role. “Instead of waiting for them to return back home we should help President al-Assad fight them there, in Syria”.
Putin was to address the United Nations General Assembly after Obama.
Moscow has put Washington on the back foot by dispatching troops and aircraft to the war-torn country and pushing reluctant world leaders to admit its long-standing ally Bashar al-Assad could cling to power. But Assad is weakening, particularly under assaults from the Islamic State, and now controls only about a sixth of the country.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is already at the United Nations summit and is set to address the gathering this morning along with Obama, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping – who is making his first appearance.
“If the Syrian government is taken out of the equation, the terrorists will enter Damascus” and “the whole country will become controlled territory, a safe haven for terrorists”.
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After years of shunning Iran from taking part in diplomatic talks on Syria, the USA now sees Iran as integral to the solution.
