Europe “guilty” over refugee crisis – Assad

Russian Federation continues to send military equipment to Syria despite complaints from the USA, which is anxious about escalating the conflict between government forces and rebel groups hoping to topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

“Right now, Russian Federation has no plans to establish an air base in Syria“, Gen. Col. Nikolay Bogdanovskiy, first deputy chief of the general staff, told reporters in Moscow.

Mr. Kerry “reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to fight ISIL with a coalition of more than 60 countries, of which Assad could never be a credible member, and emphasized the USA would welcome a constructive Russian role in counter-ISIL efforts”, it added, using an acronym by which the Islamic State is known.

Washington has been pressing Moscow to help with a political transition in Syria, which would see Assad hand over power to an interim governing body.

“We’ve made clear that further support, military or otherwise for the Assad regime is destabilizing and counter-productive, principally because Assad has lost the legitimacy to lead that country“.

“Iran supports Syria and the Syrian people“.

“Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan, who pretend to be part of a coalition against terrorism in northern Syria, actually support terrorism in the south, the north and the northwest, virtually in the same regions in which they are supposed to be fighting terrorism“, Assad alleged.

“We support the Syrian government in fighting the terrorist aggression”.

Despite those claims, White House and Pentagon officials have decried Russia’s military buildup in Latakia as “counterproductive”.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said Kerry called Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov today.

“The decision-making process in that country is rather opaque”, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said of Russian Federation, adding that Moscow has long used Syria as a “client state”. USA criticism of Russia’s growing involvement in the Syrian civil war is hypocritical because the US government is already conducting air strikes against ISIS and also training anti-ISIS fighters in Syria (and also Iraq). Russian Federation has billions of dollars of commercial investments in Syria too, including oil and gas infrastructure, which it wants to protect.

Even if Russians operated the missiles and kept them out of the hands of the Syrian army, the arrival of such an advanced anti-aircraft system could unsettle Israel, which in the past has bombed sophisticated arms it suspected were being handed to Assad’s Lebanese guerrilla allies, Hezbollah.

Secretary of State John Kerry says the Obama administration is weighing an offer from Russian Federation to have military-to-military talks and meetings on the situation in Syria.

Lavrov earlier this week had called on Washington to re-establish communication between the military brass of both superpowers to avoid “unintended incidents” as each side goes its own way seeking to defeat IS in Syria.