The White House said Obama “emphasized the importance now of Russian Federation playing a constructive role by ceasing its air campaign against moderate opposition forces in Syria”.
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He said his government’s eventual goal was to retake all of the country, large swathes of which are controlled by rebel forces or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militant group.
Russian Federation and the United States have agreed to intensify diplomatic and other cooperation to implement an agreement on Syria, struck in Munich.
The top US diplomat also spoke at length about the worldwide effort to bring about a cease-fire in Syria, and the focus on ensuring that humanitarian aid can reach besieged civilian areas.
And some reports say aid from different organizations is already on its way to some of those towns.
Still, officials acknowledged from the start that the test would be turning commitments on paper into reality on the ground – and it wasn’t clear whether deep differences regarding the truce and which groups would be eligible for it could be overcome.
In attendance at the conference were government representatives who included Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Ukrainian President Petro Poroschenko, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
Using his customary term Daesh -a scornful Arabic acronym – to refer to the Islamic State group, Kerry said: “We’re going to defeat Daesh and… our progress is measurable and growing on a steady basis”.
“One could go as far as to say that we have slid back to a new Cold War”, Medvedev said.
The U.S. military denied Thursday Moscow’s charges that A-10 Thunderbolt attack aircraft hit Aleppo, where Syrian regime forces backed by Russian airstrikes have triggered a humanitarian crisis.
“I would like to see a single day of a cessation of hostilities in order to give a chance for real political movement”, said Hijab. “If that is what Russian Federation and Assad think, then I believe they would have been missing the lessons of the last five years”.
They also reiterated their demand that President Assad be removed from power.
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Syria’s war has killed 250,000 people, wounded more than a million and displaced half the country’s population. “We’ve seen cases of redeployment of heavy armaments closer to the contact line … and multiple rocket launchers, artillery being used”, he said, referring to the heavy weaponry that is meant to be removed under the Minsk deal.
