Tag Archives: Assad

Russia’s Putin hosts Assad in fresh drive for Syria peace deal

Russia's Putin hosts Assad in fresh drive for Syria peace deal

By Katya Golubkova and Tom Perry

MOSCOW/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad late on Monday for three hours of talks to lay the groundwork for a new push by Moscow to end Syria’s conflict now that Islamic State’s territorial caliphate is overrun.

Russia is actively trying to broker an international consensus around a peace deal for Syria, over two years after Moscow began a military intervention that turned the tide of the conflict in Assad’s favor.

Putin said he would follow up his meeting with Assad by talking in the next 48 hours to international leaders with influence over the conflict, among them U.S. President Donald Trump, the Saudi king, and the leaders of Iran and Turkey.

Previous attempts to end Syria’s six years of war have foundered because of bitter disagreements among players in the conflict, both inside and outside Syria, especially whether Assad himself should stay in power.

After the talks in Russia — Assad’s first publicly-declared travel outside Syria since a trip to Moscow in October, 2015 — a Kremlin spokesman declined to say if Assad’s own future had come up in the discussions, saying only that was up to the Syrian people.

In a sign that international attempts may be underway to bridge the differences between rival sides in the conflict, leading Syrian opposition figures, including former prime minister Riyad Hijab, resigned.

Hijab headed the opposition High Negotiations Committee, formed with Saudi backing, and had insisted on Assad’s removal from power at the start of a political transition.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking in Moscow, said the resignations would make the opposition more reasonable and realistic.

On Wednesday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani — whose countries back opposing sides in the Syria conflict — will travel to Russia for a three-way meeting with Putin aimed at advancing the Syrian peace process.

SECRET VISIT

Assad’s visit to Russia was brief and closely-guarded. He flew in on Monday evening, held talks, and flew out four hours after landing, according to the Kremlin. Officials did not release word of the meeting until Tuesday morning.

Sitting either side of a small coffee table in a conference room at Putin’s residence in Sochi, southern Russia, Putin told Assad it was time to pivot from a focus on military operations to a search for a peaceful solution.

Syrian government forces and their allies at the weekend took control of Albu Kamal, the last major Syrian town held by Islamic State.

“We still have a long way to go before we achieve a complete victory over terrorists. But as far as our joint work in fighting terrorism on the territory of Syria is concerned, this military operation is indeed wrapping up,” Putin told Assad, in comments broadcast by Russian television.

“Now the most important thing, of course, is to move on to the political questions, and I note with satisfaction your readiness to work with all those who want peace and a solution (to the conflict),” Putin said.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, dressed in an olive-colored uniform, looked on as Putin and Assad spoke.

ASSAD’S FUTURE

Wearing a dark suit and sitting across a small coffee table from Putin, Assad told the Russian leader: “At this stage, especially after we achieved victory over terrorists, it is in our interests to move forward with the political process.

“And we believe that the situation we now have on the ground and in the political sense permits us to expect progress in the political process. We count on the support of Russia to ensure the non-interference of outside players in the political process,” he said through an interpreter.

“We don’t want to look backwards. We welcome all those who truly want to see a political solution. We are ready to have a dialogue with them,” said Assad.

Putin and Assad last met in Moscow on Oct. 20, 2015, a few weeks after Moscow launched its military operation in Syria, which has beaten back anti-Assad rebels and propped up struggling government forces.

Underscoring the importance of the Russian military to Assad, Putin presented the Syrian leader to top military commanders assembled at his Sochi residence.

“On behalf of the entire Syrian people, I express my gratitude for what you have done,” Assad told them. “We will not forget it.”

Assad’s opponents, and Western governments, have accused Russia of killing significant numbers of Syrian civilians with its air strikes, allegations Moscow denies.

Some people familiar with the Kremlin’s thinking say that, to reach a peace deal, Russia would not insist on Assad staying in power — as long as the institutions of the Syrian state remained intact.

But while Russia is not wedded to Assad, Iran is committed to him. Iranian forces and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia have played a big role in the fighting on the ground, supporting Assad’s forces.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah thanked and praised Shi’ite militias including Afghans and Iraqis for their role in the Syria war in a speech on Monday night.

He said the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Qods Force, Major General Qassem Soleimani, had led the battle for Albu Kamal from the frontlines.

(Additional reporting by; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Catherine Evans and William Maclean)

Russia sets out why it thinks U.N. wrongly accused Syria over sarin attack

A man breathes through an oxygen mask, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia on Thursday set out why it disputed U.N. and Western allegations that the Syrian government had been behind a deadly chemical attack on the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in April that killed dozens.

A report sent to the United Nations Security Council last week concluded that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government was responsible for the attack, which prompted a U.S. missile strike against a Syrian air base.

Russia, whose air force and special forces have been supporting the Syrian army, said at the time there was no evidence to show Damascus was responsible and the chemicals that killed civilians belonged to rebels, not Assad’s government.

On Thursday, with the aid of maps, satellite footage and charts, Moscow set out why it believed the Syrian government had been unfairly maligned.

A Russian Defence Ministry official told a media briefing that the Syrian Su-22 jet accused of dropping the chemical bomb was not physically close enough to the attack site to have been involved.

“Thus, I believe the information provided cannot confirm the use of chemical weapons in Khan Sheikhoun in the form of an aviation bomb dropped from a Syrian Air Force Su-22 jet,” the RIA news agency quoted the official, whom it did not name, as saying.

Mikhail Ulyanov, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control, told the same briefing that U.S. accusations that Russia had encouraged the use of chemical weapons in Syria were ungrounded, RIA reported.

“It was hysteria and a completely open attempt to discredit Russia with rather primitive dirty means,” Ulyanov was quoted as saying.

The White House on Wednesday admonished Russia after it vetoed a United Nations plan to continue its ongoing investigation into the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States. The Syrian government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons during the country’s more than six-year civil war.

 

(Reporting by Jack Stubbs; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

 

Russia’s Putin arrives in Iran to discuss Syria, nuclear deal

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) meets with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani in Tehran, Iran November 1, 2017.

By Denis Pinchuk

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin began a visit to Iran on Wednesday designed to underpin closer ties between two countries at loggerheads with the United States as President Donald Trump threatens to pull out of a 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran.

Putin and his Iranian hosts are expected to discuss the nuclear deal and regional crises such as the Syrian conflict, in which Moscow and Tehran are the main backers of President Bashar al-Assad, while Washington, Turkey and most Arab states support opposition groups seeking to overthrow him.

“We are very pleased that, apart from our bilateral relations, our two countries play an important role in securing peace and stability in the region,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told Putin in his welcoming remarks.

Russian and Iranian help has proved crucial for Assad, allowing him to win a series of military victories since 2015 and to reestablish his control over most of Syria. Moscow is now trying to build on that success with a new diplomatic push, including a meeting in the Black Sea resort of Sochi next month.

Moscow is also an important ally for Iran in its confrontation with the Trump administration, which on Oct. 13 refused to certify Tehran’s two-year-old nuclear deal with six major powers that include Russia and the United States.

Russia has criticized Trump’s move, which has opened a 60-day window for Congress to act to reimpose economic sanctions on Iran. These were lifted under the 2015 accord in return for Tehran curbing its nuclear program.

“This is a very important visit (by Putin) … It shows the determination of Tehran and Moscow to deepen their strategic alliance…. which will shape the future of the Middle East,” one Iranian official told Reuters, on condition of anonymity.

“Both Russia and Iran are under American pressure … Tehran has no other choice but to rely on Moscow to ease the U.S. pressure,” said the official.

Another Iranian official said Trump’s aggressive Iran policy had united Iran’s faction-ridden leadership in alignment with Russia.

During his visit, Putin will also discuss boosting bilateral economic ties, and will take part in a three-way summit between Russia, Iran and neighboring Azerbaijan, state TV said.

 

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Gareth Jones)

 

Assad sets sights on Kurdish areas, risking new Syria conflict

Assad sets sights on Kurdish areas, risking new Syria conflict

By Tom Perry, Ellen Francis and Laila Bassam

BEIRUT (Reuters) – With Islamic State near defeat in Syria, Damascus is setting its sights on territory held by Kurdish-led forces including eastern oil fields, risking a new confrontation that could draw the United States in more deeply and complicate Russian diplomacy.

President Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian allies appear to have been emboldened by events in Iraq, where Kurdish authorities have suffered a major blow since regional states mobilised against their independence referendum, analysts say.

Rivalry between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), supported by the United States, and the Syrian government backed by Iran and Russia is emerging as a fault line with their common enemy – Islamic State – close to collapse in Syria.

Syria’s main Kurdish groups hope for a new phase of negotiations that will shore up their autonomy in northern Syria. Assad’s government, however, is asserting its claim to areas captured by the SDF from the jihadist group, known in Arabic by its enemies as Daesh, in more forceful terms.

On Sunday, Damascus declared Islamic State’s former capital at Raqqa would be considered “occupied” until the Syrian army took control – a challenge to Washington which helped the SDF capture the city in months of fighting.

And the eastern oil fields seized by the SDF in October, including Syria’s largest, will be a target for the government as it tries to recover resources needed for reconstructing areas it controls, according to a Syrian official and a non-Syrian commander in the alliance fighting in support of Assad.

“The message is very clear to the SDF militants and their backers in the coalition, headed by America: the lands they took from Daesh are rightfully the Syrian state’s,” said the non-Syrian commander, who requested that his name and nationality be withheld.

“Regarding the resources of the Syrian people in the east – oil and so on – we will not allow anyone to continue to control the country’s resources and to create cantons or to think about self government,” added the commander, who is part of a military alliance that includes numerous Iran-backed Shi’ite militias from across the region.

The Syrian official said the SDF could not keep control of oil resources. “We won’t permit it,” said the official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity as he was giving a personal view.

The United States has not spelt out how military support for the SDF will evolve after Islamic State’s defeat, a sensitive point due to the concerns of its NATO ally Turkey.

Ankara regards Syrian Kurdish power as a threat its national security as its forces are fighting Kurdish PKK rebels over the border in Turkey.

The U.S.-led coalition, which has established several military bases in northern Syria, has been helping the SDF shore up control of the recently captured al-Omar oil field in Deir al-Zor province.

“Many people will say that will help them with (political) negotiations, but only if the United States remains with them, otherwise they are going to get clobbered,” said Joshua Landis, an expert on Syria and head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

“I think the Syrian government is going to push on some of these oil wells, in the same way as Iraq just pushed to get Kirkuk oil, and in the same way the Iraqi push is going to embolden the Syrian army,” he said.

KIRKUK “LESSON”

Iraqi Kurds took control of large areas outside their autonomous region during the fight against Islamic State. However, last month’s independence referendum prompted Western opposition and fierce resistance from Baghdad, Ankara and Assad’s Iranian allies, and the Kurdish authorities have since lost much territory to Baghdad, including oil producing areas around the city of Kirkuk.

The Syrian official said this should serve “as a lesson for the Kurds in Syria, so they think about the future”.

Regional sources say the U.S. unwillingness to stop Iraqi government forces, backed by Shi’ite militias, from recapturing Kirkuk sent an encouraging message to Assad and his Iranian allies to retake the SDF-held oil areas in Syria.

With critical military support from Russia and the Iran-backed militias, Assad has recovered swathes of central and eastern Syria from Islamic State this year, having defeated many anti-Assad rebel factions in western Syria.

The Kurdish YPG militia, the dominant force in the SDF, controls the second largest chunk of Syrian territory – around a quarter of the country. Syrian Kurdish leaders say they are not seeking secession.

The YPG and Damascus have mostly avoided conflict during the Syrian civil war, setting aside historic enmity to fight shared foes. Kurdish-led regions of northern Syria have meanwhile focused on establishing an autonomous government which they aim to safeguard.

Moscow has called for a new “congress” of Syrian groups that may start work on a new constitution. The Russian Foreign Ministry published on Tuesday a list of 33 groups and political parties invited to a meeting in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Nov. 18.

A Syrian Kurdish official told Reuters the administration in northern Syria had been invited to the congress. Kurdish officials said they discussed their political demands with the Russians as recently as last month.

A senior Kurdish politician said government statements directed at the Kurdish-led regions of northern Syria were contradictory, noting that the Syrian foreign minister had said in September that Kurdish autonomy demands were negotiable.

“One day they say we are willing to negotiate and then someone else denies this or puts out an opposing statement,” Fawza Youssef said in a telephone interview with Reuters. “One of them declares war and the other wants to come negotiate. What is the regime’s strategy? Dialogue or war?”

After the final defeat of Islamic State in Deir al-Zor, “the situation will drive all the political sides and the combatants to start the stage of negotiations”, Youssef said.

The SDF has also pushed into Arab majority areas, including Raqqa and parts of Deir al-Zor, where it is working to establish its model of multi-ethnic local governance.

Analysts believe the Syrian Kurdish groups could use the SDF-held Arab areas as bargaining chips in negotiations with Damascus.

“There is no other option than to negotiate,” Youssef said. “Either a new stage of tensions and attrition will start – which we are 100 percent against – or a stage of dialogue and negotiations will start.”

(Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy in Washington; Writing by Tom Perry; editing by David Stamp)

Exclusive: Death certificate offers clues on Russian casualties in Syria

Exclusive: Death certificate offers clues on Russian casualties in Syria

By Maria Tsvetkova

MOSCOW (Reuters) – An official document seen by Reuters shows that at least 131 Russian citizens died in Syria in the first nine months of this year, a number that relatives, friends and local officials say included private military contractors.

The document, a death certificate issued by the Russian consulate in Damascus dated Oct. 4, 2017, does not say what the deceased was doing in Syria.

But Reuters has established in interviews with the families and friends of some of the deceased and officials in their hometowns that the dead included Russian private military contractors killed while fighting alongside the forces of Moscow’s ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The presence of the Russian contractors in Syria – and the casualties they are sustaining – is denied by Moscow, which wants to portray its military intervention in Syria as a successful peace mission with minimal losses.

The Russian defense ministry did not immediately respond to detailed questions submitted by Reuters. Requests for comment from the Russian consulate in Damascus did not elicit a response.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a statement provided to Reuters on Friday: “We do not have information about individual citizens who visit Syria. With that, I consider this question dealt with.”

Reuters sent questions to a group of Russian private military contractors active in Syria through a person who knows their commanders, but did not receive a response.

The official death toll of military personnel in Syria this year is 16. A casualty figure significantly higher than that could tarnish President Vladimir Putin’s record five months before a presidential election which he is expected to contest.

A Reuters count of the number of Russian private contractors known to have been killed in Syria this year, based on interviews with relatives and friends of the dead and local officials in their hometowns, stands at 26.

Russian authorities have not publicly released any information this year about casualties among Russian civilians who may have been caught up in the fighting.

The Russian Foreign Ministry, in response to Reuters questions, said the consulate in Syria was fulfilling its duties to register the deaths of Russian citizens. It said that under the law, personal data obtained in the process of registering the deaths was restricted and could not be publicly disclosed.

In August, Igor Konashenkov, a Russian defense ministry spokesman, said in response to a previous Reuters report that information about Russian military contractors in Syria was “a myth”, and that Reuters was attempting to discredit Moscow’s operation to restore peace in Syria.

UNUSUAL

A Russian diplomat who has worked in a consulate in another part of the world, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said the figure of 131 registered deaths in nine months was unusually high given the estimated number of Russian expatriates in Syria.

Although there is no official data for the size of the community, data from Russian national elections shows there were only around 5,000 registered Russian voters in the country in 2012 and 2016.

“It is as if the diaspora is dying out,” he said.

High numbers of deaths are usually recorded by Russian consulates only in tourist destinations such as Thailand or Turkey, he said.

Russian consulates do not register the deaths of military personnel, according to an official at the consulate in Damascus who did not give his name.

The consular document seen by Reuters was a “certificate of death” issued to record the death of Sergei Poddubny, 36. It was one of three death certificates seen by Reuters.

Poddubny’s certificate, which bears the consulate’s stamp, lists the cause of death as “carbonization of the body” – in other words, he was burned.

It said he was killed on Sept. 28 in the town of Tiyas, Homs province, the scene of heavy fighting between Islamist rebels and pro-Assad forces. Several Russian contractors were killed in the area earlier this year, friends and relatives told Reuters.

Poddubny’s body was repatriated and buried in his home village in southern Russia about three weeks later. He had been in Syria as a private military contractor, one of his relatives and one of his friends told Reuters.

Poddubny’s death certificate had a serial number in the top right corner, 131.

Under a Justice Ministry procedure, all death certificates are numbered, starting from zero at the start of the year and going up by one digit for each new death recorded.

The Russian diplomat confirmed that is the procedure.

Reuters saw two other certificates, both issued on Feb. 3. The numbers – 9 and 13 – indicate certificates for at least five deaths were issued on that day. They were both private military contractors, according to people who know them.

The death of a Russian citizen would have to be registered at the consulate in order to repatriate the body back to Russia via civilian channels, according to the Russian diplomat.

A death certificate from the consulate would also help with bureaucracy back home relating to the dead person’s assets, the diplomat said.

The bodies of Russians fighting on the rebel side are not repatriated, according to a former Russian official who dealt with at least six cases of Russians killed in Syria and the relatives of four Russian Islamists killed there.

A few thousand Russian citizens with Islamist sympathies have traveled to rebel-held areas since the conflict began in 2011, according to Russian officials.

(Additional reporting by Andrey Kuzmin; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

No role for Assad in Syria’s future: Tillerson

No role for Assad in Syria's future: Tillerson

By Jonathan Landay

GENEVA (Reuters) – President Bashar al-Assad and his family have no role in the future of Syria, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Thursday ahead of peace talks aiming at a political transition scheduled to resume next month.

Tillerson said that the Trump administration backed the Geneva peace talks as the only way to end the more than six-year-old war and move to a political transition and elections.

He was speaking after holding talks with U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, who announced that stalled peace talks between the Syrian government and still-to-be-united opposition would resume in Geneva on Nov. 28.

“The United States wants a whole and unified Syria with no role for Bashar al-Assad in the government,” Tillerson told reporters in the Swiss city at the end of a week-long trip that took him to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan and India.

“It is our view and I have said this many times as well that we do not believe that there is a future for the Assad regime and Assad family. The reign of the Assad family is coming to an end. The only issue is how that should that be brought about.”

When the Trump administration came into office it took the view that it was “not a prerequisite that Assad goes” before the transitional process started, he added.

Supported by Russian air power and Iran-backed militias, Assad appears militarily unassailable and last month Assad ally Hezbollah declared victory in the Syrian war.

Those forces have pushed Islamic State back from large swathes of eastern Syria in recent months and over the past year have taken numerous pockets of rebel-held territory around Aleppo, Homs and Damascus.

“My reading is that Assad is here to stay for as long as the Russians and the Iranians have no alternative to him,” a Western diplomat told Reuters. “The date of his departure will depend on the Russians more than anyone else. Once – or if – they find someone better, he may go.”

Ceasefire deals brokered by Russia, Turkey, Iran and the United States in remaining rebel-held areas of western Syria have freed up manpower for Assad’s allies.

Tillerson called his discussions with de Mistura “fruitful” and said the United States will “continue our efforts to de-escalate the violence in Syria”.

He said the only reason Assad’s forces had succeeded in turning the tide in the war against Islamic State and other militants was “air support they have received from Russia”.

Tillerson said Iran, Assad’s other main ally, should not be seen as having made the difference in the defeat of Islamic State in Syria.

“I do not see Syria as a triumph for Iran. I see Iran as a hanger-on. I don’t think that Iran should be given credit for the defeat of ISIS (Islamic State) In Syria. Rather I think they have taken advantage of the situation.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; additonal reporting by Tom Perry in Beiut; writing by Stephanie Nebehay and Lisa Barrington; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Hugh Lawson)

Israel sees Assad winning Syria war, urges more U.S. involvement

FILE PHOTO: Syria's President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Croatian newspaper Vecernji List in Damascus, Syria, in this handout picture provided by SANA on April 6, 2017. SANA/Handout via REUTERS

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s defense minister said on Tuesday President Bashar al-Assad was winning Syria’s civil war and urged the United States to weigh in as Damascus’s Iranian and Hezbollah allies gain ground.

Avigdor Lieberman’s comments marked a reversal for Israel, where top officials had from the outset of fighting in 2011 until mid-2015 regularly predicted Assad would lose control of his country and be toppled.

“I see a long international queue lining up to woo Assad, include Western nations, including moderate Sunnis. Suddenly everyone wants to get close to Assad. This is unprecedented. Because Assad is winning, everyone is standing in line,” he told Israel’s Walla news site.

In late 2015, Russia helped Assad turn the tide with a military intervention that put Moscow’s forces in the field alongside Israel’s most potent foes – Iran and the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah – opposite Syrian rebels.

The United States has focused its Syria operations on fighting rebel jihadis like Islamic State – dismaying Israel, which has tried to persuade both Washington and Moscow that Iran’s expanding clout is the greater threat.

In its decades under Assad family rule, Syria has been an enemy of Israel, with their armies clashing in 1948, 1967, 1973 and 1982. While largely keeping out of the Syrian civil war, Israel has tried to sway the world powers involved in the conflict and cautioned it could strike militarily to prevent Iran and Hezbollah entrenching further on its northern front.

“We hope the United States will be more active in the Syrian arena and the Middle East in general,” Lieberman said. “We are faced with Russians, Iranians, and also the Turks and Hezbollah, and this is no simple matter to deal with, on a daily basis.”

Lieberman did not elaborate on what actions he sought from the Donald Trump administration, which Israel has been lobbying for reassurances that Iranian and Hezbollah forces will not be allowed to deploy near its border or set up bases within Syria.

“The United States has quite a few challenges of its own, but as a trend – the more the United States will be active, the better it will be for the State of Israel,” Lieberman said.

(The story is refiled to add dropped source in third paragraph)

(Writing by Dan Williams; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Syria investigator del Ponte signs off with a sting

Carla del Ponte, member of the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic attends a news conference into events in Aleppo at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 1, 2017.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Veteran prosecutor Carla del Ponte signed off from the United Nations Syria investigation on Monday by criticizing the U.N. Security Council and telling Syria’s ambassador his government had used chemical weapons.

The former Swiss attorney general, who went on to prosecute war crimes in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia, said in August she was resigning from the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria because of a lack of political backing.

Bidding farewell to the U.N. Human Rights Council, which set up the Commission of Inquiry six years ago, Del Ponte said she had quit out of frustration.

“We could not obtain from the international community and the Security Council a resolution putting in place a tribunal, an ad hoc tribunal for all the crimes that are committed in Syria,” she said.

“Seven years of crime in Syria and total impunity. That is not acceptable.”

Del Ponte told a Swiss newspaper last month enough evidence existed to convict President Bashar al-Assad of war crimes.

Her departure leaves only two remaining commissioners of the inquiry, Karen Koning AbuZayd and the chairman, Paulo Pinheiro, who said that eventually, a great many people would have to answer “as to why they did not act sooner to stop the carnage”.

“The deadlock at the Security Council on Syria is reprehensible and, at times, bewildering,” he told the Human Rights Council.

Leaving the council, del Ponte told Syria’s ambassador that she had been right to quickly reach the conclusion that Assad’s government had used chemical weapons during an attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in April.

“It was me, mister ambassador,” she said.

“I said that in my opinion and based on the elements we already had, the Syrian government was responsible. Today we have the confirmation after an official commission’s inquiry. So now, we ask for justice, we ask justice for those victims.”

 

(Reporting by Tom Miles and Cecile Mantovani; editing by Andrew Roche)

 

Islamic State convoy in Syria appears to have turned back, U.S.-led coalition says

A convoy of Islamic State fighters and their families begin to depart from the Lebanon-Syria border zone in Qalamoun, Syria August 28, 2017.

By Angus McDowall

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A convoy of Islamic State fighters appears to have turned back after U.S.-led airstrikes thwarted its attempt to reach territory held by the militant group in eastern Syria, the head of U.S.-led forces fighting Islamic State said on Thursday.

More than 300 lightly armed IS fighters and about 300 family members were evacuated from Syria’s western border with Lebanon under a ceasefire agreement involving the ultra-hardline group, the Syrian army and the Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah.

On Thursday they sought to move into IS-held territory from a new location after U.S.-led strikes on Wednesday stopped them joining forces with their jihadist comrades, a commander in the pro-Syrian government military alliance said.

However, U.S. Army Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, the commander of U.S.-led forces fighting Islamic State, told a Pentagon briefing that the convoy had turned back into Syrian government territory.

“When I walked into this conference about an hour ago, the buses were on the move. They had turned and had driven back into regime-held areas,” he told reporters via a video teleconference from Baghdad.

“We haven’t struck the convoy. But we have struck every ISIS fighter and/or vehicle that has tried to approach that convoy. And we’ll continue to do that,” he said.

The coalition opposes experienced combatants being moved to a battle zone in which it is active, and used warplanes on Wednesday to halt the convoy by damaging the road ahead. It also struck fighters on their way to meet the convoy.

A commander in the pro-Syrian government military alliance said the convoy had headed north towards the town of Sukhna on Thursday after being halted in the desert and would try to reach Deir al-Zor province, close to the border with Iraq.

Two sources familiar with U.S. policy on Syria said the airstrikes did not signal a more aggressive military approach, and were intended to prevent the IS fighters in the convoy reinforcing their comrades in Deir al-Zor.

But the standoff shows the tangled nature of a war theater divided into several overlapping conflicts, and where the engagement of local, regional and global powers is further complicated by a mosaic of alliances and enmities.

Six years into Syria’s civil war, in which Islamic State has seized swathes of land, the jihadist group is on the retreat across the region, losing ground to an array of foes.

In Syria, the government of President Bashar al-Assad has rapidly gained ground this year as the army advanced eastwards, backed by Russia and allied Iran-backed militia including Hezbollah, towards its besieged enclave in Deir al-Zor.

But in the north, the United States — which opposes Assad, Iran and Hezbollah — has led a coalition backing Kurdish and Arab militias as they assault Islamic State’s former Syrian capital of Raqqa.

 

NASRALLAH VISITED DAMASCUS

Hezbollah-affiliated media have reported that the Syrian town of Al-Bukamal, close to the border with Iraq, is the final destination for the convoy.

Hezbollah has been one of Assad’s closest allies in the war and it trumpeted the departure of Islamic State, after that of two other militant groups, from the Lebanon border as a “day of liberation”.

On Thursday, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Assad had only reluctantly agreed to the evacuation after Nasrallah visited Damascus to request it, a rare public acknowledgement that he had traveled outside Lebanon.

Iraq’s Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, said it was “unacceptable” to ferry more jihadist fighters from another battlefront in Syria to the edge of Iraqi territory, prompting a statement from Hezbollah defending the move.

Iraq has formed a dedicated intelligence operations room to monitor and track the jihadists, a senior Interior Ministry official told state media, saying the convoy included “elite commanders” of Islamic State.

After it was blocked from moving eastwards on Wednesday, the convoy headed north within government territory to try to move into Islamic State land from a new location, the commander in the pro-Assad alliance said.

The commander added that the convoy would head on again after an exchange of dead combatants and prisoners. The bodies of an Iranian killed in the fighting and two other dead fighters were to be swapped for 25 wounded IS fighters traveling with the convoy, the commander said.

In Tehran, the country’s Revolutionary Guards said on their website that the dead Iranian, whom they identified as Mohsen Hojaji, would be returned at an unspecified date for a funeral and burial.

 

LIFE ON BUSES “GETTING KIND OF HARD”?

The fighters retained light weapons but left heavier arms in their enclave after being evacuated from western Lebanon following heavy fighting there.

“I would imagine life getting kind of hard on those buses after two and a half days or more, largely cooped up in those buses driving around in the desert,” Townsend said.

Such deals have increasingly been used by the Syrian army and its allies to press besieged rebels to surrender their enclaves and to relocate to insurgent-held territory elsewhere, but this is the first such deal involving Islamic State.

In the process, Islamic State revealed the fate of nine Lebanese soldiers it took captive in its border enclave in 2014, as well as surrendering a Hezbollah prisoner.

An official in the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, which is helping with the exchange, has entered Islamic State territory to accompany the prisoner back to the government-held area, the commander in the pro-Assad military alliance said.

Hezbollah-aligned al Akhbar newspaper in Lebanon reported on Thursday that some IS leaders in eastern Syria did not want members of the group who had surrendered territory to be welcomed back into their self-declared caliphate.

 

 

(Reporting by Leila Bassam and Sarah Dadouch in Beirut, Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad, Idrees Ali, David Alexander and John Walcott in Washington, and Dubai Newsroom, Writing by Angus McDowall, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

 

France says powers must impose transition on Syrians, no role for Assad

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian attends a conference of Italian ambassadors in Rome, Italy July 24, 2017.

By John Irish

PARIS (Reuters) – France’s foreign minister said on Friday he wanted major powers to agree on a transition plan that would be imposed on Syrians, but ruled out any role for President Bashar al-Assad, who he said had “murdered” part of his population.

Jean-Yves Le Drian’s comments come despite what has appeared to be a softening in Paris’ position since the arrival of President Emmanuel Macron.

Macron’s election victory gave Paris, which is a key backer of the Syrian opposition and the second-largest contributor to the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State, a chance to re-examine its Syria policy.

Macron proposed dropping demands Assad step down as a pre-condition for talks, although French officials still insist he cannot be the long-term future for Syria.

Le Drian, defence minister under former president Francois Hollande, said the anticipated defeat of Islamic State militants meant there was an opportunity for a compromise. More than 300,000 people have died in six years of fighting and millions more have fled Syria.

“He (Assad) cannot be part of the solution. The solution is to find with all the actors a calendar with a political transition that will enable a new constitution and elections,” Le Drian told RTL radio.

“This transition cannot be done with Bashar al-Assad who murdered part of his population and who has led millions of Syrians to leave” their homeland, he said.

Critics accused the Hollande administration of intransigence over Assad’s future, although it later said Assad would have to leave only once a transition process was complete.

 

CONTACT GROUP

That position has put France at odds with Russia and Iran, who back Assad and say the Syrian people should decide their own future.

While Britain has said Assad must go, diplomats say the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has yet to outline a vision for a political process in Syria and is focusing primarily on defeating Islamic State and countering Iran.

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with AFP news agency in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture provided by SANA on April 13, 2017.

FILE PHOTO: Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with AFP news agency in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture provided by SANA on April 13, 2017. SANA/Handout via REUTERS

The U.N. Security Council has already adopted a Syria transition roadmap and two diplomats said the latest French idea was to get the five permanent members of the council – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – to agree first how to move forward.

The Security Council would then bring into fold the main regional powers, although diplomats said it was pointless without Iran’s involvement. There were also questions on how to win U.S. support given the Trump administration’s staunch anti-Iranian position.

“That’s what we want to do now even before Assad leaves. We do that independently because if we wait for the Syrians to agree we will wait a long time and there will be thousands more dead,” Le Drian said.

Macron has said the initiative would begin to see light during the U.N. General Assembly in mid-September.

Le Drian has previously said the contact group would aim to help U.N.-brokered peace talks in Geneva. They have stalled in large part due to the weakness of opposition groups and the Assad government’s refusal to enter substantive negotiations, given its strong position on the ground.

The last major international attempt to resolve the crisis ended in failure when the International Syria Support Group, which included Iran, was disbanded after Syrian government forces retook the rebel stronghold of Aleppo in 2015.

 

(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Jon Boyle)