Syrian opposition confirms Russia’s proposal on constitutional reform

Russian Federation says it is bombing the Islamic State group and other “terrorists” in Syria, but the USA and its allies have said Moscow is mainly targeting more moderate forces fighting Assad.

Russian ground troops and heavy weapons have also been spotted in areas far beyond their official bases in the Latakia Province.

This would be followed by simultaneous parliamentary and presidential elections after the constitution is approved in a referendum.

Russian Federation sees this as an attempt to divide participants in the Vienna talks into “those who are leading and those who are being led”, Zakharova said. Absolutely a red line.

While Assad’s future is still a central and divisive issue at the talks, negotiators have tried to build cohesion by focusing on the need to stop Islamic State.

It suggests that the group include numerous same members that are taking part in the Vienna talks: the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Lebanon, Germany, Italy, the U.N. special envoy, Arab League, Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the European Union. “Bashar should be detained and put on trial”, al-Maleh, a senior member of the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition, said by telephone from Egypt. They want all power transferred to a transitional governing body, as is called for in the Geneva Communique.

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, whose fighters have played a key role in backing Assad, said the latest battlefield gains by government forces show that their rivals “should move toward a political solution without preconditions that are impossible to achieve”. “As hard as those negotiations surely will be, rushing to elections without serious, perceptible progress on the rule of law first is a sure-fire scenario to make the Syrian civil war even nastier”. This logic led President Lyndon Johnson to send hundreds of thousands of troops to Vietnam, fueling a war in which millions died, not because nearly anybody in his administration thought South Vietnam mattered in and of itself, but because letting it go communist would undermine America’s credibility in Asia and the world. The Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman said on Tuesday that Moscow would be concentrating on this at the meeting.

Ahead of the upcoming second round of Vienna talks, Russian Federation said it hopes all parties to the discussions, including the United States, can agree on which groups operating in Syria are “terrorist” – another area where Moscow’s pro-Assad sentiments are likely to produce disagreements.

Russian Federation has maintained since the beginning that it is not wedded to Assad as such but rather to the maintenance of the Syrian state.

Saudi Arabia, for its part, didn’t leave ISIL Islamists waiting for help long either.

A few Western diplomats dismissed the Russian plan because it does not clarify Assad’s fate.

“We must all make efforts to eradicate terrorism in Syria and ensure that peace and stability return”, and the best way to eliminate terrorists is to keep a strong government in Damascus, he said. Had the debate moderators confronted the GOP contenders with this reality on Tuesday, it would have quickly deflated their bravado, since post-George W. Bush Republican foreign policy rests on the premise that the United States can restore order and hegemony in the Middle East without the sacrifice of American lives.

Since the first days of Russian airstrikes in Syria, when militants got a taste of real bombs falling on their heads, and while fortifications, equipment, and command bunkers were being obliterated, Washington suddenly became quite vocal in claiming that the wrong terrorists were under fire.