Latakia is home to the ancestral village of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and has been targeted by rocket attacks several times.
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Russia’s deputy United Nations ambassador Vladimir Safronkov has confirmed to the Associated Press and other media that a leaked document from Moscow about the future of Syrian peace initiatives is legitimate.
The document said the Syrian opposition which takes part in the political process must form a “united delegation ” and be agreed beforehand.
The momentum generated in Vienna “needs to not be missed”, Staffan de Mistura told reporters in NY ahead of a new round of high-level talks due on Saturday in the Austrian capital. “This information does not correspond to reality”, said the spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova.
Reports on this weekend’s talks on Syria suggest Russian Federation is planning to propose an 18-month period of reform in the nation, leading to free elections.
“We’re not going to come out of one these meetings with a “eureka” moment”, Hammond said. “The eight-point plan itself is not central to the discussions in Vienna but Russian Federation is”, he said. “We welcome any constructive ideas that will accelerate an end of this bad conflict”.
A Western diplomat said the Russian document appeared to be “a trial balloon” to test global reaction, and also to calm any uneasiness among Assad’s entourage. “And that is why those tactical and strategic battles, which are taking place in all directions in the territory of Syria, are a large, and already serious regional scenario for a real fight against worldwide terrorism”, the senator is sure. We have tried for four years and it didnt work.
Speaking in a personal capacity, he said the Syrian president should not be able to stand because “he killed hundreds of thousands of his own people” in the war.
Western diplomats said it would be hard for countries opposed to Assad to agree on the draft Russian proposal.
“That just isn t enough”, said the Security Council diplomat, who asked not to be identified.
“Our preparations for the Vienna meeting are based on the document that was adopted on October 30”, she said, referring to the previous meeting in Vienna.
The Russian record, entitled “Way to deal with The Settlement of The Syrian Crisis”, concentrates on both resistance and “terrorist gatherings”, and the need to separate between them.
Syria has been mired in a civil war between the government and opposition groups as well as terrorists since 2011.
Mr al-Maleh said Russia wants “the current regime to stay”, adding that the Russian air campaign “will be defeated”. “The arms and ammunition which our pilots determined as their target, they received it from various sources, but including from the so-called Syrian moderate opposition, which was trained in camps in Jordan and Turkey with money from the United States”.
This would be followed by simultaneous parliamentary and presidential elections after the constitution is approved in a referendum.
Assad was elected for a third seven-year term last year in an election boycotted by the opposition and dismissed as a sham by its Western supporters. “As hard as those negotiations surely will be, rushing to elections without serious, perceptible progress on the rule of law first is a sure-fire scenario to make the Syrian civil war even nastier”. Both countries have given support to rebels fighting Syria’s government, a loose collection of allies and rivals in which Islamist groups have come to dominate.
It would blast Islamic State and other Islamist militant groups for widespread rights abuses.
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The Syrian army meanwhile has broken a siege in the north.
