Tag Archives: Civil War

At peace talks, Syria rebels urge Trump to correct Obama’s “catastrophic mistakes”

Syria's main opposition delegation with High Negotiations Committee (HNC) leader Nasr al-Hariri (C) attend a meeting with United Nations (UN) Syria envoy during Syria peace in Geneva, Switzerland, February 27, 2017. REUTERS/ Fabrice Coffrini/Pool

By Tom Miles and John Irish

GENEVA (Reuters) – The lead Syrian opposition negotiator at peace talks in Geneva said he hoped U.S. President Donald Trump would correct the “catastrophic” errors of his predecessor Barack Obama to become a reliable partner against “devilish” Iran.

The U.N.-led negotiations edged forwards on Wednesday, for the first time in six days, as both sides saw hope of shaping the agenda to their liking, but with indirect talks wrapping up this weekend there is little prospect of any real breakthrough.

“The people in Syria paid a high price because of the catastrophic mistakes made by the Obama administration,” Nasr al-Hariri told reporters in a briefing after meeting U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura.

“Obama lied and he didn’t keep any of the promises he made for the Syrian people. He drew red lines that he erased himself, he kept silent on crimes committed by Bashar al-Assad.”

Obama long maintained that Assad, Syrian president for 17 years, must step down after presiding over a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions.

The United States has provided training, weapons and funding for rebel groups, but stopped short of attacking Assad’s forces, which slowly turned the tide of the war with massive Russian and Iranian help.

“We reiterated the devilish role that Iran is playing through hundreds of thousands of fighters on the Syrian soil,” Hariri said in response to a question on what he had told Russian officials during their landmark meeting on Thursday.

The opposition and the Russians had not previously met at the Geneva talks. Diplomats said the meeting may be uncomfortable for Assad, Moscow’s ally, who regards his opponents as terrorists.

Trump has said his priority is to fight Islamic State, which has left Russia in the diplomatic driving seat and put Russia, Turkey and Iran in charge of overseeing a shaky ceasefire.

He has also made it clear he wants to rein in Tehran’s regional ambitions.

Trump’s administration has so far done little to suggest it is willing to engage in finding a political solution for Syria.

“Their policy is still unknown,” said a Western diplomat at the talks. “They are almost not here.”

While Western envoys were coordinating with the Syrian opposition in Geneva, the U.S. envoy kept his head down and left after a few days to deal with other issues.

“The U.S. is not a direct participant in the UN-led talks,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Mission in Geneva said. “The U.S. remains committed to any process that can result in a political resolution to the Syrian crisis.”

When asked during a White House briefing this week about the talks, spokesman Sean Spicer gave no clear answer on how Washington saw the process or Assad’s role.

Hariri said the opposition had common ground with Trump because both wanted to fight terrorism and curtail Iranian influence. Washington, he said, should support the opposition.

“We are really waiting for the United States to build their positions on true information to have an active role in the region and to correct the grave mistakes of the Obama administration,” Hariri said.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alison Williams)

Congo police kill at least four in dawn raid on separatist cult

FILE PHOTO: A resident holds up a Bundu dia Kongo manifesto left behind after a police crackdown on the religious and political movement in Matadi, capital of Democratic Republic of Congo's volatile Bas Congo province, March 18, 2008.REUTERS/Joe Bavier/File Photo

By Aaron Ross and Benoit Nyemba

KINSHASA (Reuters) – Congo police made a pre-dawn raid on a separatist group in Kinshasa on Tuesday, killing four people but failing to arrest their leader, a self-styled religious prophet, witnesses and group members said.

Dozens of armed police stormed the home of Ne Muanda Nsemi, leader of Bundu dia Kongo (BDK), a religious cult that seeks to revive the pre-colonial Kongo kingdom that flourished for centuries around the mouth of the Congo river.

Police have clashed with BDK members several times in the past few weeks in their western heartland of Kongo Central province, but the spread of violence to the capital, hundreds of kilometres (miles) away, is a serious escalation.

It also adds to wider tensions across Congo since President Joseph Kabila refused to step down after his mandate expired in December, raising fears of a slide back into civil war.

“We are looking for (Muanda Nsemi). We are going to find him,” said Communications Minister Lambert Mende, without saying what he was accused of. He denied police had fired live ammunition.

Spokesman Pierre Mwanamputu said Muanda Nsemi’s supporters had participated in an “armed insurrectional movement” in Kinshasa on Monday.

Members of the BDK said the four fatalities were due to police preventing the wounded getting swift medical attention.

“There are four dead because they were not taken care of,” said Basangana Ndunga, president of BDK’s political wing. He said two other members had been killed in separate clashes in Kinshasa.

Residents think the raid may have been provoked by a video circulating on social media in which Muanda Nsemi appears to threaten Kabila.

However, it was unclear whether the BDK supporters in Kinshasa, who could be seen on the roofs of several buildings in their distinctive white robes and red head-dress, were armed.

Security forces killed more than 300 BDK members and bystanders in crackdowns on sometimes violent protests in 2007 and 2008, dumping their bodies in the Congo river or mass graves, rights groups say.

Separately, the United Nations said on Tuesday that soldiers targeting the Kamwina Nsapu militia group had killed at least 101 people between Feb. 9 and Feb. 13 in central Congo.

(Writing by Emma Farge; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Syria truce under strain; Assad ready to discuss ‘everything’ at talks

Bashar al-Assad speaking on Syrican Civil War to French press

By Tom Perry

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A Syrian truce brokered by Russia and Turkey was under growing strain on Monday as rebels vowed to respond to government violations and President Bashar al-Assad said the army would retake an important rebel-held area near Damascus.

Assad, in comments to French media, also said his government was ready to negotiate on “everything” at peace talks his Russian allies hope to convene in Kazakhstan, including his own position within the framework of the Syrian constitution.

But he indicated any new constitution must be put to a referendum and it was up to Syrians to elect their president.

His opponents have insisted throughout nearly six years of civil war that he must leave power under any future peace deal. But since Russia joined the war on his side in late 2015, his government’s position on the battlefield has strengthened dramatically, giving him greater leverage now than at any time since the war’s earliest days.

The ceasefire which came into effect on Dec. 30 aims to pave the way for the new peace talks which Russia hopes to convene with Turkish and Iranian support. But no date has been set for the talks and the warring sides have accused each other of truce violations.

The Moscow-led effort to revive diplomacy, without the participation of the United States, has emerged with Assad buoyed by the defeat of rebels in Aleppo, and as ties thaw between Russia and Turkey, long one of the rebels’ main backers.

Ankara, now seemingly more worried by growing Kurdish sway in Syria than toppling Assad, supports the diplomatic push.

The latest fighting has been especially intense near Damascus where the army and allied militia are trying to capture a rebel-held area that includes the main water source supplying Damascus. It was bombed out of service more than two weeks ago.

Assad blamed truce violations on the insurgents, and said the army must “prevent terrorists from using the water to throttle the capital”. He said it was the army’s job to recapture the Wadi Barada area, which he said had been occupied by a jihadist group not covered by the ceasefire.

Rebels deny the area is in jihadist hands.

The United Nations has said 5.5 million people have had little or no running water for more than two weeks in Damascus. It blamed “deliberate targeting” for destroying the pumping station, without saying by whom. Rebels accuse the government.

Talks between the government and rebels aimed at allowing repairs to the pumping station failed at the weekend, and heavy air strikes were reported in the area on Sunday.

“WE WILL NOT REMAIN SILENT”

The spokesman for one of the rebel groups that signed the ceasefire said rebel leaders had concluded they could not continue abiding the truce in what he described as a “unilateral way”, and they would respond to attacks by the other side.

“Even if the agreement continues within what has been agreed on, they have the full right to respond to breaches wherever they are,” Mamoun Haj Musa, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army-affiliated Suqur al Sham rebel group, told Reuters.

“They will open a number of fronts perhaps in the context of responding to violations that have stretched from Deraa to Aleppo, Idlib and of course Wadi Barada,” he said.

Writing on Twitter, the head of another rebel group said rebels had agreed to the truce to spare Syrian blood. But with violence continuing, “we will not remain silent” wrote Mohamad al-Mansour, head of Jaish al-Nasr.

The rebels’ already slim prospects of removing Assad by force diminished further after he recaptured all of Aleppo with direct military support from the Russian air force and Iranian-backed militias. The city, Syria’s largest before the war, had been divided with rebels in control of the east since 2012.

President-elect Donald Trump has indicated he may cut U.S. support for the rebels, a move that would further diminish the risks to Assad, who has consolidated his rule around the major cities of western Syria and the coast.

Swathes of Syria remain out of his control, including the Islamic State-controlled eastern province of Deir al-Zor, large areas of northern Syria that have been taken over by a Kurdish militia, and pockets of rebel-held territory in the west.

Asked if the government planned to recapture the Islamic State-held city of Raqqa, Assad said it was the Syrian army’s role to liberate “every inch” of Syrian land and all Syria should be under state authority.

“But the question is related to when, and our priorities. This is a military matter linked to military planning and priorities,” he added.

The United States is backing an alliance of militias including the Kurdish YPG in a campaign aimed ultimately at recapturing Raqqa city.

TALKS CAN’T SUCCEED WITHOUT CEASEFIRE – OPPOSITION

Russia, Turkey and Iran, the three foreign powers involved in the latest peace drive, plan to divide Syria into informal zones of influence under an outline deal they reached, sources told Reuters in Moscow last month.

But such a deal would still need buy-in from Assad, his opponents and, eventually, the Gulf states and Washington.

Rebel groups fighting under the “Free Syrian Army” banner have already frozen any discussion of their possible participation in the Astana talks.

The Syrian government dismisses opposition groups backed by Assad’s enemies as foreign creations. In his comments to the French media, Assad asked “Who will be (in Astana) from the other side? We do not yet know. Will it be a real Syrian opposition?”

Dismissing groups he said were backed by Saudi Arabia, France and Britain, Assad said discussion of “Syrian issues” must be by Syrian groups. The main Syrian opposition umbrella group, the High Negotiations Committee, is backed by Riyadh.

HNC member Riad Nassan Agha said he had not heard of anyone being invited to the Astana talks yet.

“Syrians do not yet feel that there is a ceasefire. The battles are continuing: the attack on Wadi Barada, on (rural) western Aleppo, on Idlib, on the Ghouta (suburban area near) Damascus, Deraa,” he said.

Astana “cannot succeed unless the ceasefire is implemented”, he said.

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Toby Chopra and Peter Graff)

Turkey, Russia see need for Aleppo truce but divisions remain

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov shakes hands with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu in Alanya, Turkey,

By Tulay Karadeniz

ALANYA, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkey and Russia, two of the main backers of opposing sides in Syria’s civil war, said on Thursday they agreed on the need for a halt to fighting and the provision of aid in Aleppo but deep divisions remain between them over the conflict.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said he and his visiting Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov agreed on the need for a ceasefire in Aleppo, but added that Turkey’s stance on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was unchanged.

Russia is a main backer of Assad, while Turkey supports the rebels fighting to oust him. The rebels have come under siege in eastern Aleppo after rapid advances by Syrian government forces in recent days, bringing them to the brink of a major defeat.

“A ceasefire must be achieved in all of Syria, notably in Aleppo,” Cavusoglu told a joint news conference in the Mediterranean town of Alanya, adding Turkey was in agreement with Russia in broad terms on the need for a ceasefire, humanitarian aid and political transition.

Lavrov said the bloodshed must stop in Syria and the region, that Moscow was ready to talk to all parties in the war, and that it would continue cooperating with Turkey. But he also vowed Russia would continue its operations in eastern Aleppo and would rescue the city from what he described as terrorists.

Syrian rebels on Wednesday vowed to fight on in east Aleppo in the face of sudden government advances that have cut the city’s opposition sector by a third.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan discussed the situation in Aleppo with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin by phone for the third time in a week on Wednesday and agreed on the need for a ceasefire, sources in Erdogan’s office said.

While remaining divided on Assad’s future, Ankara and Moscow have been trying to find common ground on Syria since a rapprochement in August.

(Writing by Nick Tattersall and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Daren Butler and Andrew Heavens)

Aleppo evacuations to fall flat, rebels prevent any exit

Rebel fighters drive their motorcycles under the smoke of burning tyres, western Aleppo city,

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A Syrian government official said he did not expect civilians or rebels to leave besieged eastern Aleppo on Friday during an evacuation window announced by Russia and accused insurgents of blocking any exit.

Moscow and the Syrian army told rebel fighters this week to leave opposition-held neighborhoods with light weapons through two corridors by Friday evening, and said civilians would be allowed to evacuate by other exit points.

There was no sign of any evacuations, however.

“I wish civilians would exit … but I expect that won’t happen, not under these circumstances,” Fadi Ismail, an official based in Aleppo in Syria’s reconciliation ministry, told Reuters via telephone.

Ismail said fighters from al Qaeda’s former Syria branch were preventing both rebels and civilians who wished to leave from doing so, and that factions appeared determined to fight on.

“Jabhat al-Nusra is in control of all of the crossings. For civilians, it’s impossible to leave as long as Nusra controls the area,” he said, referring to the group which now calls itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

“We’re communicating with civilians and even with some militants, the ones who want to leave. Unfortunately, when militants want to leave it’s individual cases, not (entire) factions handing themselves over.”

Rebels say that Fateh al-Sham has a very small presence in Aleppo city itself, although the powerful group has been crucial for the fight against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and their allies more widely in Aleppo province.

Ismail said prospects for a deal with rebels looked bleak, and he expected military action to resume if no one left on Friday.

“All the messages (from rebels) that I used to receive were ‘we’re coming for you with car bombs’,” he said. “There was nothing to suggest reconciliation would happen.”

Asked what would happen if no one evacuated, he said: “There must be military action, of course”.

Russia is expected to resume its bombardment of Aleppo once the evacuation window closes later on Friday. Moscow says it has not launched air strikes on the city for more than two weeks as Damascus calls on rebels to leave.

Insurgents have meanwhile launched a counter attack to try to break the siege on eastern Aleppo, which has been mostly surrounded by pro-government forces since July.

Assad seeks the recapture of Aleppo as a strategic prize in the civil war, which is in its sixth year. Some 250,000 people are trapped in eastern Aleppo, and around 1.5 million live in the government-held western neighborhoods.

(Reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus and Ellen Francis in Beirut; Writing by John Davison; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Harrowing video shows dazed, bloodied boy pulled from Aleppo rubble

image of boy from Aleppo

(Reuters) – His face bloodied and completely covered in dust, the little boy sits quietly, staring ahead, dazed and shocked after an apparent air strike in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Alone in an ambulance, the boy – identified by doctors as five-year-old Omran Daqneesh – tries to wipe the blood off his head, unaware of the injury he has sustained.

Video of children being pulled from the rubble of a building hit by air strikes in Aleppo has been widely circulated on social media, causing upset and condemnation over the harrowing reality of Syria’s five-year war.

Aleppo, split into rebel- and government-controlled areas, has become the focus of fighting in Syria’s five-year conflict.

Rebel-held areas are suffering heavy air strikes daily as pro-government forces try to retake territory lost to rebels two weeks ago in the southwest of Aleppo.

The video was shot on Wednesday in the rebel-held al-Qaterji neighborhood of the city.

It shows an aid worker carrying the little boy out of a building and placing him on a seat inside an ambulance, before rushing back out to the bombed-out scene. The boy sits alone, stunned, before two more children are brought into the vehicle. A man with blood on his face then joins them.

Last year, international sympathy for victims of Syria’s war was heightened by a photo of a drowned 3-year-old refugee from Syria, Alan Kurdi, washed up on a Turkish tourist beach. The image of Aylan, who died when a people smugglers’ boat taking his family and other refugees to a nearby Greek island capsized, swept across social media and was retweeted thousands of times.

(This version of the story has been refiled to corrects spelling of boy’s name in last paragraph)

(Reporting by Reuters Television and Beirut newsroom; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Shelling, air strikes in Libya siege on Islamic State in Sirte

Tank from forces allied with Libya

MISRATA, Libya (Reuters) – Libyan forces allied with the U.N.-backed government have been shelling and carrying out air strikes on the center of Sirte city in a siege of Islamic State militants there, an official said on Tuesday.

Militants defending Islamic State’s last stronghold in Libya have been keeping Libyan forces back with sniper fire and mortars in Sirte where they are now surrounded after a two month campaign to take the city.

The fall of Sirte would be a major blow to Islamic State, which took over the city a year ago in the chaos of a civil war between rival factions who once battled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

“Our forces have…targeted militants with artillery and air force around Ouagadougou complex, Ghiza Asskariya district, and in the city center,” said Rida Issa, spokesman for Misrata forces fighting in Sirte.

“They have targeted Islamic State members, vehicles, ammunition stores, and control rooms.”

He said one Misrata fighter was killed and 20 others wounded in a mortar strike on their position in the Zaafran frontline, near the roundabout where Islamic State once crucified victims.

The bodies of around 13 Islamic State fighters were found, but Misrata forces were driven back by sniper fire.

Western powers are backing Prime Minister Fayaz Seraj’s government that moved into Tripoli three months ago in an attempt to unify two rival governments and various armed factions. Seraj is working with a unified National Oil Corporation to restart the oil industry.

But while powerful brigades from Misrata city support Seraj for now and lead the fight to liberate Sirte, other hardliners to the east are still opposing him and his government has made little progress in extending its influence.

After a rapid success in driving Islamic State back from a coastal strip of territory it controlled, the battle for Sirte has slowed to street-by-street fighting as Misrata forces clear out residential areas.

Misrata commanders say a few hundreds militants are dug in around the Ouagadougou complex, the university and a city hospital. They are cautious of advancing rapidly after more than 200 fighters died in the campaign so far.

While forces from the city of Misrata are fighting Islamic State in Sirte, rival brigades allied to Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army are fighting to the east on another front in Benghazi and around another eastern town. Haftar’s hardline backers reject Seraj’s government.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Elumami in Tripoli; Writing by Patrick Markey; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Dozens of U.S. Diplomats urge military strikes against Assad

Syria's president Bashar al-Assad speaks to Parliament members in Damascus

By John Walcott and Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – More than 50 State Department diplomats have signed an internal memo critical of U.S. policy in Syria, calling for military strikes against President Bashar al-Assad’s government to stop its persistent violations of a civil war ceasefire.

The “dissent channel cable” was signed by 51 mid- to high-level State Department officers advising on Syria policy.

It calls for “targeted military strikes” against the Syrian government in light of the near-collapse of the ceasefire brokered earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing copies of the cable it had seen.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, visiting Copenhagen, told Reuters on Friday: “It’s an important statement and I respect the process, very, very much. I will … have a chance to meet with people when I get back (to Washington).”

He said he had not seen the memo.

Military strikes against the Assad government would represent a major change in the Obama administration’s policy of not intervening directly in the Syrian civil war, while calling for a political transition that would see Assad leave power.

Such strikes would put the United States on a collision course with Russia, which is backing Assad with air strikes, equipment, training and military advice.

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he had only seen media reports about the memo, but said: “Calls for the violent overthrow of authorities in another country are unlikely to be accepted in Moscow.

“The liquidation of this or some other regime is hardly what is needed to aid the successful continuation of the battle against terrorism. Such a move is capable of plunging the region into complete chaos.”

One U.S. official, who did not sign the cable but has read it, told Reuters the White House remained opposed to deeper American military involvement in Syria.

The official said the cable was unlikely to alter that, or shift Obama’s focus from the battle against the threat posed by the Islamic State militant group.

PRESSURE ON ASSAD

A second source who had read the cable said it reflected the views of U.S. officials who have worked on Syria, some for years, and who believe the current policy is ineffective.

“In a nutshell, the group would like to see a military option put forward to put some pressure … on the regime,” said the second source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

While dissent cables are not unusual, the number of signatures on the document is large.

“That is an astonishingly high number,” said Robert Ford, who resigned in 2014 as U.S. Ambassador to Syria over policy disagreements and is now at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank.

“For the last four years, the working level at the State Department has been urging that there be more pressure on Bashar al-Assad’s government to move to a negotiated solution,” to the civil war, he said.

Ford said this was not the first time the State Department has argued for a more activist Syria policy. In 2012, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposed arming and training anti-Assad rebels. The plan, which had backing from other Cabinet officials, was rejected by President Barack Obama and his White House aides.

The dissenting cable discussed the possibility of air strikes but made no mention of adding U.S. ground troops to Syria. The United States has about 300 special operations forces in Syria carrying out a counter-terrorism mission against Islamic State militants but not targeting the Assad government.

“We are aware of a dissent channel cable written by a group of State Department employees regarding the situation in Syria,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said.

“We are reviewing the cable now, which came up very recently, and I am not going to comment on the contents.”

Kirby said the “dissent channel” was an official forum that allows State Department employees to express alternative views.

Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan told a congressional hearing on Thursday that Assad was in a stronger position than he was a year ago, bolstered by Russian air strikes against the moderate opposition.

Brennan said Islamic State’s “terrorism capacity and global reach” had not been reduced.

The names on the memo are almost all mid-level officials, many of them career diplomats, who have been involved in Syria policy over the past five years, at home or abroad, the New York Times said.

(Additional reporting by Warren Strobel, Lesley Wroughton in Copenhagen and Dmitry Solovyov and Andrew Osborn in Moscow; Writing by Eric Beech and Teis Jensen; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Expansion of U.S. Ground Troops in Syria

Children walk near garbage in al-Jazmati neighbourhood of Aleppo

HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) – President Barack Obama announced on Monday the biggest expansion of U.S. ground troops in Syria since the civil war there began, saying he would dispatch 250 special forces soldiers to help local militia to build on successes against Islamic State.

The new deployment increases U.S. forces in Syria six-fold to about 300. While the total U.S. ground force is still small by comparison to other American deployments, defense experts said it could help shift the momentum in Syria by giving more Syrian fighters on the ground access to U.S. close air support.

Announcing the decision in Germany at the end of a six-day foreign tour, Obama said the move followed on victories over Islamic State that clawed back territory from the hard-line Sunni Islamist group.

“Given the success, I’ve approved the deployment of up to 250 additional U.S. personnel in Syria, including special forces to keep up this momentum,” Obama said in a speech at a trade fair in the northern city of Hanover, the last stop on a trip that has taken him to Saudi Arabia and Britain.

“They’re not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces as they continue to drive ISIL back,” he added, using an acronym for Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

The U.S. military has led an air campaign against Islamic State since 2014 in both Iraq and Syria, but the campaign’s effectiveness in Syria has been limited by a lack of allies on the ground in a country where a complex, multi-sided civil war has raged for five years.

Russia launched its own air campaign in Syria last year, which has been more effective because it is closely coordinated with the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who is Moscow’s ally but a foe of the United States.

CLOSE AIR SUPPORT

Washington’s main allies on the ground have been a Kurdish force known as the YPG, who wrested control of much of the Turkish-Syrian border from Islamic State. The alliance is complex because U.S. ally Turkey is deeply hostile to the YPG.

“Presumably these are going to assist our Kurdish YPG friends to widen and deepen their offensive against IS in northeastern Syria,” Tim Ripley, defense analyst and writer for IHS Janes Defence Weekly magazine, said.

“You can provide more advisers to more units, to allow more units to receive close air support,” Ripley said, of the new U.S. deployment. “The more people you have, the more militia groups can have close air support that makes them more effective so they can advance in more areas.”

The Syria Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed coalition set up in October to unite the Kurdish YPG and some Arab allies, said it welcomed Obama’s announcement but still wanted more help.

“Any support they offer is positive but we hope there will be greater support,” SDF spokesman Talal Silo said. “So far we have been supplied only with ammunition, and we were hoping to be supplied with military hardware …”

Ripley said Washington would still have to take a political decision to help the Kurds despite Turkish objections. Kurdish advances have largely stopped since February, with Turkey strongly objecting to the Kurds taking more territory.

“The real question has to be: are they going to let the Kurdish YPG forces actually go and attack and capture some territory? This is something the Americans have not been happy about because when the YPG forces attack and capture territory, it tends to anger the president of Turkey,” Ripley said.

If the Kurds are given the green light to advance with American air support, the main short-term objective could be sealing off the last stretch of the border that is not held by the Kurds or the government, west of the Euphrates river.

That would deny Islamic State access to the outside world, but would infuriate Turkey which regards the border as the main access route for other Sunni Muslim rebel groups it supports against Assad, and for aid to civilians in rebel areas.

THE RACE FOR RAQQA

U.S. special forces teams providing close air support could ultimately help the Kurds advance on Raqqa, Islamic State’s main Syrian stronghold and de facto capital.

“This places them in another quandary. Do they coordinate their attack on Raqqa with the Syrian army and the Russian air force, who are … advancing on Raqqa? … The question is who’s going to get there first,” Ripley said.

With German Chancellor Angela Merkel sitting in the audience, Obama also urged Europe and NATO allies to do more in the fight against Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

The group controls the cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria and a swathe of territory in between, and has proven a potent threat abroad, claiming responsibility for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March.

“Even as European countries make important contributions against ISIL, Europe, including NATO, can still do more,” Obama said ahead of talks later in the day with Merkel and the leaders of Britain, France and Italy.

European countries have mostly contributed only small numbers of aircraft to the U.S.-led mission targeting Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria.

Obama pledged to wind down wars in the Middle East when he was first elected in 2008. But in the latter part of his presidency he has found it necessary to keep troops in Afghanistan, return them to Iraq and send them to Syria, where the five-year civil war has killed at least 250,000 people.

Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, briefing reporters before Obama spoke, said U.S. forces “are not being sent there on a combat mission”.

In Iraq, Islamic State has been forced back since December when it lost Ramadi, capital of the western province of Anbar. In Syria, jihadist fighters have been pushed from the strategic city of Palmyra by Russian-backed Syrian government forces.

TALKS IN MELTDOWN, TRUCE IN TATTERS

But Washington’s lack of allies on the ground has meant its role in Syria has been circumscribed. The sudden entry of Moscow into the conflict last year has tipped the balance of power in favor of Assad, against a range of rebel groups supported by Turkey, other Arab states and the West.

Washington and Moscow sponsored a ceasefire between most of the main warring parties since February, which allowed the first peace talks involving Assad’s government and many of his foes to begin last month. However, those talks appear close to collapse, with the main opposition delegation having suspended its participation last week, and the ceasefire is largely in tatters. Islamic State is excluded from the ceasefire.

Fighting has increased in recent days near Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city, now split between rebel and government zones. A monitoring group said 60 people had been killed there in three days of intense fighting, including civilians killed by rebel shelling and government air strikes.

The Syrian government’s negotiator at the Geneva talks said a bomb hit a hospital near a Shi’ite shrine near Damascus, killing many innocent people and proving the government’s enemies were terrorists.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Andreas Rinke in Hanover, Jeff Mason and Kevin Drawbaugh in Washington, Michelle Martin in Berlin and Peter Graff in London; writing by Noah Barkin and Peter Graff, editing by Peter Millership)

Syrian peace talks limp on to next week without opposition

Syrian Peace Talks

By John Davison and Stephanie Nebehay

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – The U.N. special envoy for Syria has vowed to take fragile peace talks into next week despite a walkout by the main armed opposition, a breakdown in a truce and signs that both sides are gearing up to escalate the five-year-old civil war.

Staffan de Mistura, who dismissed the opposition’s departure as “diplomatic posturing”, expected the delegation to return to the negotiating table. The opposition declared a “pause” this week because of a surge in fighting and too little movement from the government side on freeing detainees or allowing in aid.

Asked whether talks would carry on, de Mistura said on Thursday night: “We cannot let this drop. We have to renew the ceasefire, we have to accelerate humanitarian aid and we are going to ask the countries which are the co-sponsors to meet.”

The talks at U.N. headquarters in Geneva aim to halt a conflict that has allowed for the rise of the Islamic State group, sucked in regional and major powers and created the world’s worst refugee crisis.

In an interview with French-language Radio Television Suisse (RTS), de Mistura said 400,000 people had been killed in the war, far higher than the previous U.N. toll which has varied from 250,000 to 300,000.

The war was tilted in Assad’s favor late last year by Russia’s intervention, supported on the ground by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps who have been bolstered recently by the arrival of members of Iran’s regular army.

WASHINGTON CONCERNED BY RUSSIAN MOVES

The White House has expressed concern that Russia has repositioned artillery near the disputed city of Aleppo.

The Russian military moves have sharpened divisions in Washington over whether President Vladimir Putin genuinely backs the U.N.-led initiative to end the war or is using the talks to mask renewed military support for Assad.

“The regime is so reliant on external support that it is inconceivable that its allies don’t have the leverage to change its approach,” Britain’s envoy to the Syria peace talks, Gareth Bayley, said on Friday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that the decision by the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) to quit Geneva was not a loss for anyone except the HNC itself.

“If they want to ensure their participation (in the peace talks) only by putting ultimatums, with which others must agree, it’s their problem,” Lavrov said, adding:

“For God’s sake, we shouldn’t be running after them, we must work with those who think not about their career, not about how to please their sponsors abroad, but with those who are ready to think about the destiny of their country.”

The head of the Syrian delegation, Bashar Ja’afari, confirmed he met de Mistura to discuss humanitarian issues on Friday and would be meeting with him again on Monday.

Moscow and Washington sponsored the fragile cessation of hostilities that went into effect on Feb. 27 to allow talks to take place but has been left in tatters by increased fighting in the past week.

In Aleppo, government air strikes in different parts of the city killed at least 10 people and wounded dozens more on Friday, with the death toll expected to rise due to serious injuries, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Further southwest in Hama province, warplanes targeted rebel-held areas in the strategic Ghab plain that borders Latakia province, Assad’s coastal heartland.

Insurgents announced a new battle in Latakia earlier this week which they said was in response to ceasefire violations by the government side, launching fierce assaults there. Fighting raged in the area on Friday, said the British-based Observatory, which monitors the conflict with a network of sources on the ground.

ASSAD MAIN ISSUE

Endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, the Geneva peace talks marked the most serious effort yet to resolve the war, but failed to make progress on political issues, with no sign of compromise over the question of Assad’s future.

Government negotiators say Assad’s presidency is non-negotiable. Underlining confidence in Damascus, a top Assad aide reiterated its view that local truce agreements and “destroying terrorism” were the way toward a political solution.

The opposition wants a political transition without Assad, and says the government has failed to make goodwill measures such as releasing detainees and allowing enough aid into opposition-held areas besieged by the military.

The HNC, which is backed by Western nations and key Arab states, had this week urged more military support for rebels after declaring the truce was over and said talks would not re-start until the government stopped committing “massacres”.

All the main HNC members had left Geneva by Friday, leaving a handful of experts and a point of contact behind.

With violence escalating, peace talks might not resume for at least a year if they are abandoned, one senior Western diplomat said.

Syria is now a patchwork of areas controlled by the government, an array of rebel groups, Islamic State, and the well-organized Kurdish YPG militia.

On Friday, rare clashes between YPG fighters and government-allied forces and militiamen took place for nearly a third day, the Observatory said, in fighting which a Syrian Kurdish official said had killed 26 combatants. Kurdish and government forces have mostly avoided confrontation in the past.

(Additional reporting by John Irish in Geneva; writing by Peter Millership; editing by Peter Graff)