Share

With Islamic State targeted, what happens to Syria’s Assad?

United States president Barack Obama has reiterated his administration’s belief that Syria’s civil war will not end until Syrian president Bashar al-Assad leaves power. You need to establish a direct contact with the French and work with them as with allies.

Advertisement

Russian Federation has acted quickly since then, doubling its airstrikes against terrorist groups in Syria on Tuesday. “Roosevelt didn’t like Stalin, but he had to get a deal with him in order to defeat the Nazis, who were the greater evil”, Garcia-Margallo said.

US and European officials also said they believe Iran’s elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has withdrawn some troops from Syria in recent weeks, because of a strain on its resources.

Obama suggested that Russia might be reorienting its military campaign in Syria toward IS targets following the downing of a Russian jet in Egypt – a step the president said “we very much want to see”.

The U.S. and Russia appear to be working at cross purposes – the U.S. bombing ISIS and seeking Assad’s ouster, while Russian planes are accused of bombing U.S.-supported rebels in support of Assad.

ROME – Syrian President Bashar Assad has told Italian state television that no political process can begin while “terrorists” occupy his nation.

Russian Federation and Iran, Obama said, will have to make a “fundamental shift” in their policy on Syria if they hope to take on ISIS successfully.

But as Putin is now winning the concessions he wanted on the future of Syria-a veto over the successor regime to Assad and protection of Russia’s Mediterranean naval base and listening posts-the situation is changing and Russian Federation is becoming more involved in the fight against IS.

After meeting Obama, Putin said he may ease repayment terms on $3 billion that Ukraine owes Russian Federation, a rare concession to Kiev which, while welcome there, only fuelled its sense of being a chip in the major powers’ global game.

The top diplomat recalled President Vladimir Putin’s speech at the UN General Assembly and his asking foreign partners if they realized what they had done.

People look at flowers, candles and messages in tribute to victims in front of the La Belle Equipe cafe, one of the sites of the 13 November attacks in Paris, France, November 17, 2015.

If Hollande is going to win his war with the Islamic State, he will have to depend on stronger action from Washington, in coordination with Moscow, and even that is unlikely to be enough.

Russian Tupolev-95MS strategic bombers launched twelve cruise missiles from the Russian territory at the facilities and installations controlled by the Islamic State in Syria, including a missile targeted at the terrorist grouping’s headquarters in the city of Idlib.

Neither the Syrian government nor opposition were invited to take part in the event in Vienna so that the countries could present a unified message.

“It’s not the right moment to judge who is better and who is worse”, Putin said.

“As long as Putin’s theory of the conflict is inverse of what the rest of the world thinks, it’s impossible for me to see that there would be any military cooperation with the Russians”, Derek Chollet, former assistant secretary of defense, said Monday.

Advertisement

Information for this article was contributed by Vladimir Isachenkov, Josh Lederman, Kathleen Hennessey, Karl Ritter, Sylvie Corbet and staff members of The Associated Press and by Eddie Buckle of Bloomberg News.

Syrian President Bashar Assad reviews the presidential guard during a welcoming ceremony in Athens. The tide of global rage against the Islamic State group lends greater urgency to ending the jihadis ™