The army announcement came after state television said the last convoy of four buses carrying rebels and civilians had left east Aleppo and arrived in the government-controlled Ramussa district south of the city.
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“Syria really could be a signpost for the emergence of a new global system”, says Mr. Gerges.
Image copyright EPA Image caption President Assad on the US: “They think they are the judge of the world”.
The last of them left the city late on Thursday for countryside immediately to the west, under a ceasefire deal in which the International Committee of the Red Cross said about 35,000 people, mostly civilians, had departed.
“Russia, having changed the balance of power on the ground, without regard to civilian consequences, has moved to make itself an arbiter”.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke to the Foreign Ministers of Russian Federation and Turkey, Sergei Lavrov and Mevlut Cavusoglu, respectively, after the Moscow meeting. It doesn’t mean that the American diplomacy is now void, invalid and no more a part of more extensive efforts.’ ‘We are not excluded, we are not being sidelined, ‘ Kirby said.
But most importantly, the coming together of Russia, Iran and Turkey and their Moscow declaration highlight the failure of the United States and the UN to get a credible peace process off the ground.
Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Moscow, Iran and Turkey believe Saudi Arabia should join efforts to resolve the Syrian civil war. “However, in order to see to what extent the USA will be active and effective in this issue, first we have to observe the Syrian policies of the Trump administration”.
In this vein, Iran’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom Hamid Baeidinejad wrote on his Instagram page December 18, “Everyone knows that Western countries are unhappy with the liberation of Aleppo, but they need to be honest and search for [the cause of] this unhappiness in their previous wrong policies”.
Separately, Peskov told reporters that U.S. -Russia relations are in a “deplorable state”, characterized by “an extreme degree of distrust”.
President-elect Donald Trump’s position on the conflict in Syria has been a confusing assortment of positions, the latest of which – his call for a safe zone in Syria – seems informed by his most recent conversations with candidates he interviewed for the position of secretary of state.
As opposed to this, Russia, Iran and Turkey are far more engaged in Syria.
Ultimately, he said, it was too soon to judge whether the talks were a success.
Russian Federation says that if they happen, the talks would be in addition to intermittent UN-brokered negotiations in Geneva.
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The list of those attending the Moscow meeting reflected the shifted dynamics of Syria’s civil war, where foreign powers are able to temper the successes or otherwise of their local allies on the ground, and where the United States has been sidelined for now by failed, stagnant strategies and an inability to maintain leverage in previous negotiations.
