Lavrov and United Nations envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura will reportedly be meeting on Wednesday in Moscow, while next week a meeting may be held between Syrian opposition representatives and the Damascus government, reported Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Bogdanov.
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Russian Federation hosted de Mistura after 19 key global players met for talks in Vienna on Friday, including the United States, Iran and Saudi Arabia, in the broadest push yet to end the conflict. He said the Syrian government had agreed to participate, but it was unclear which opposition groups would attend.
Spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry stressed that Moscow hasn’t obtained through diplomatic channels or other sources official any information from Washington about accusations that Russia is destroying civilian infrastructure, fighting the opposition instead of ISIS terrorist organizations and hitting undeclared targets, noting that the US Department of State evades answering these allegations.
Iranian media agency Fars reported that the Syrian army had also regained control of al-Fark mountain in the coastal province of Latakia after fierce clashes with opposition forces.
“The co-ordinates of all of these targets were given to us by opposition representatives”, said senior military official Andrei Kartapolov, without specifying with which groups Moscow had co-operated.
Iran has provided Assad’s government with military and political backing for years, recently saying it has increased the number of advisers from the Revolutionary Guards on the ground there.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday the fate of President Bashar al-Assad should be decided by the Syrian people and that keeping him in power is not crucial to Russia’s objectives.
Elsewhere, the Observatory said the civilian death toll had risen to 23 in apparent Russian strikes Monday on the IS-held town of Al-Qaryatain. “We just don’t think we’re there yet”, she added.
Meanwhile, Lavrov voiced the hope that before the next global meeting in Vienna, parties concerned could come to an agreement on who should be treated as legitimate opposition in Syria and who should be considered terrorist groups like the Islamic State (IS).
Two top US diplomats on Wednesday defended President Barack Obama’s policy to defeat Islamic State militants in Syria in the wake of Russian intervention that both said has dangerously destabilized the battlefield.
State TV said the road was now being demined and would be reopened to traffic on Thursday.
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When he was asked why the Obama administration announced the dispatch of a contingent of Special Operations forces to Syria on the same day a multinational conference was discussing diplomatic solutions to the country’s civil war, Secretary of State John F. Kerry responded that it was a “coincidence”.
