Russia Ready to Cooperate With Other Countries on Counterterrorism in Syria

Russian Defense Ministry is ready to cooperate on military operations against terrorists in Syria with all interested countries, the head of the Main Operations Directorate of the Russian General Staff said Saturday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Lt. Gen. Andrei Kartapolov noted that even though Russia has invited all countries interested in the fight against ISIL to share any useful information about Islamic State objects in Syria and Iraq with Moscow, only Damascus, Tehran and Baghdad have contributed so far.

“But we are still open to dialogue with all interested countries and would welcome any constructive contribution to this work,” Kartapolov said.

Russia, Syria, Iran and Iraq agreed last week to cooperate on security and intelligence sharing in Syria and established an information center in Baghdad to coordinate efforts in the fight against ISIL.

The center is aimed at collecting, processing, summarizing and analyzing current data about the Middle East in the context of the fight against ISIL, distributing the information between general staffs of the participating countries.