Military cooperation between the US and Russia in Syria became much more likely after the passing of the UN Security Council resolution on resolving the country's conflict, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday at a joint press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
"I discussed this initiative with President Putin, and several times with Foreign Minister Lavrov. Now that we have a UN resolution, and now that we have the process moving, that door is much more open and much important for us to consider ways in which there could be greater cooperation," Kerry said.
Kerry added that the discussion has to make it clear to the opposition that the cooperation is not a "surrogate backdoor" for supporting Bashar al-Assad.
Lavrov noted that it appears that some parties want a "hope of overthrowing Assad" as a precondition to the fight against terrorist groups.
"Regarding airstrikes, our proposal to coordinate on this remains on the table for two and a half months," Lavrov added.
'Friends of Syria' Promise to Stop Supporting Terrorists
Members of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), which other than Russia and China includes the opposing "Friends of Syria" group, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, agreed that all countries would stop funding groups that some ISSG parties deem as terrorist if a ceasefire agreement is reached, US Secretary of State John Kerry said at a Friday UN press conference.
"There was an agreement reached <…> in the discussions in Paris, that everybody will be better served by honoring one or two or three countries’ perceptions of a group as a terrorist group," Kerry stated on Friday evening.
"Clarity is needed here, so, as [US Secretary of State] John [Kerry] said, we have agreed to work out criteria so that in the future other obvious terrorist groups could be added to ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra. For us such a criteria would include certain organizations' regular shelling of residential districts of Damascus and other inhabited areas, including repeated shelling of the Russian Embassy in Syria," Lavrov said.
The al-Nusra Front is a major ally of rebel groups under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army in most parts of Syria.
