Russia to hold key Syria talks with anti-Assad allies US, Saudi Arabia and Turkey
Multinational talks will also include the EU and UN
The top diplomats from Russia, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Turkey will hold talks on the war in Syria on Friday, after Moscow thrust itself into the heart of the conflict with its bombing campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad.
The envoys from Washington, Riyadh and Ankara – all of which back groups battling against Assad – will look to sound out Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Vienna after the embattled Syrian strongman made a surprise visit to Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin this week.
On September 30, Russia launched air strikes in Syria which have shifted the dynamics of the brutal four-and-a-half year war – allowing Assad's battle-weary forces to go on the offensive and overshadowing a US-led coalition bombing the Islamic State group.
The US and its regional allies have decried Russia’s strikes, insisting Moscow is not mainly targeting Islamic State as it claims, but other groups battling the regime in Damascus, and that the Kremlin's intervention will only prolong the fighting.
Ahead of the talks in the Austrian capital, Assad’s fate remains a major a stumbling block and, after years of failure to stop the bloodshed in Syria, there was scant hope of any major breakthrough.
Washington and its regional allies have long insisted Assad has to go for there to be any chance of a political solution to fighting that has cost more than 250,000 lives, but Moscow says it must first help him defeat IS and other “terrorists” before talks can start on any reforms.
“The aim of the US is to get rid of Assad, probably that is so, our aim is to defeat terrorism, to battle terror, and to help President Assad claim victory over terror,” Putin said on Thursday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
