ROME (Sputnik) — Moscow is seeking to coordinate its military offensive against Islamic State (IS, or Daesh in Arabic) with the campaign being conducted by the US-led international coalition, on an equal basis, and not accession to the campaign, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday.
"Now we are still talking about coordination, not accession to the US coalition, but coordination of actions that we carry out, and that the coalition carries out, on an equal basis," Lavrov said at a joint news conference after talks with Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni in Rome.
A US-led international coalition has been carrying out a campaign against Daesh, a group outlawed in a number of countries including Russia, in Syria since 2014. Russian jets commenced a separate military operation against Daesh and other extremists in Syria on September 30, following a request from Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has long called for the creation of a broad international coalition to fight Daesh, most notably at the UN General Assembly in September.
