John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, meets ministers from countries that are both for and against Syria’s regime in Vienna.
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“We need to have peace, we need to have negotiations, and for that, we need to stop bombings against civilians”, Valls said during his speech in Munich.
“Russia has indiscriminately bombed civilians and moderate opposition groups for months with impunity”, he said. The statement was made around the same time Turkish forces shelled a Syrian air base and nearby village that was recently captured by Kurdish fighters.
As battles rage around the embattled Syrian city, so too has the war of words between Russian Federation and the United States.
“The grey areas come about when Russian Federation says it will continue to target terrorist groups“, Stein added. Last week, he said women and children were being killed “in large numbers” by Russian raids.
“While Western nations talked about a political solution in Syria, Russia continues to intensify its military assaults to change the course of events”, Kalin said.
Sergey Lavrov was speaking at a security conference in the German city of Munich on Saturday (February 13), one day after the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) agreed to a “cessation of hostilities”.
President Dalia Grybauskaite of neighboring Lithuania said Russian Federation “is demonstrating open military aggression in Ukraine, open military aggression in Syria”.
“It is an opportunity for us to turn our undivided attention on Daesh, which is probably the single most challenging global threat”, said GCC Secretary General Abdullatif al-Zayani, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.
Rebel groups in Syria have told the BBC they would not stop fighting because they do not believe that Russian Federation will end its bombing campaign in support of the government.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said Sunday that Russia’s efforts to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will not succeed in keeping him in power.
In talks with Russian Federation, he said, “we will work through where this targeting should take place, where it shouldn’t, how we work together in order to be effective so we don’t drive people away from the table”.
“During a brief discussion, the two ministers went over plans for the organization and essential tasks of the task force charged to develop modalities for a cessation of hostilities in Syria”, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said. The war has claimed the lives of a quarter of a million people and displaced more than half of the country’s population.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, asked at a security conference in Munich on Saturday to assess the chances of the cessation of hostilities deal succeeding, replied: “49 percent”.
Zarif said on Friday that his country and Saudi Arabia “must overcome years of strained relations and work for stability in Syria and the Middle East”. The U.S. diplomat acknowledged that “many Europeans feel overwhelmed by the latest round of challenges, including concerns about the U.K.’s potential exit from the EU”.
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Moscow has warned against any new foreign ground intervention in the country, saying such a development could even lead to a world war.
