US and Russian military officials have held talks in Geneva ahead of a wider meeting on Friday aimed at trying to secure a cessation of hostilities in Syria, diplomats said.
US and Russian military officials have held talks in Geneva ahead of a wider meeting on Friday aimed at trying to secure a cessation of hostilities in Syria, diplomats said.
The unannounced bilateral meeting was aimed at narrowing positions before the two powers jointly chair a United Nations meeting on the issue, they said, declining to give details.
“The idea of the whole exercise is for Russia and the United States to have a joint view. The UN will apparently promote a ceasefire and implementation, and will negotiate with the parties,” a diplomat close to the process said.
UN spokesperson Michele Zaccheo said the larger meeting of the International Syria Support Group would take place at the United Nations on Friday afternoon.
Moscow hopes that agreements on a ceasefire in Syria will be reached on Friday, Interfax news agency quoted Russian deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov as saying on Thursday.
Russian airstrikes begun last September saved President Bashar al-Assad’s forces after months of military gains by rebels and turned the tide of fighting in his favour, exasperating the United States and its allies which have been working for years to defeat him.
Russia’s envoy to the UN on Friday warned Mr Assad over his vow to retake all of Syria, saying he faced dire consequences if he did not comply with Moscow over the peace process.
“Russia has invested very seriously in this crisis, politically, diplomatically and now also militarily,” Vitaly Churkin told Kommersant daily, referring to an international agreement to cease hostilities sealed in Munich last week.
“Therefore we would like Assad also to respond to this,” he said, adding that the Syrian leader’s stance “is not in accord with the diplomatic efforts that Russia is making”.
In an interview with AFP last week, Mr Assad defiantly pledged to retake the whole of the country, speaking before the plan for a nationwide “cessation of hostilities” in Syria was announced.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman expressed an interest in resolving the Syrian crisis, the Kremlin said in a statement following phone talks between the two on Friday.
Mr Putin confirmed an invitation to the King to visit Russia, the statement said.
Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said US-supplied weapons had been used against civilians by a Syrian Kurdish militia group that Ankara blames for a deadly suicide bombing, and said he would talk to President Barack Obama about it later on Friday.
Mr Erdogan and the Turkish government have said the Syrian Kurdish PYD’s armed wing, the YPG, was responsible for a suicide car bomb attack in the administrative heart of the capital, Ankara, on Wednesday which killed 28 people, most of them soldiers.
Mr Erdogan said he was saddened by the West’s refusal to call the PYD and YPG terrorists and would explain to Mr Obama by phone how weapons provided by the United States had aided them.
“I will tell him, ‘Look at how and where those weapons you provided were fired’,” he told reporters in Istanbul.
“Months ago in my meeting with him I told him the US was supplying weapons. Three plane loads arrived, half of them ended up in the hands of Daesh (ISIS), and half of them in the hands of the PYD,” he said.
“Against whom were these weapons used They were used against civilians.”
