Putin, Obama discuss Syria in phone call

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev rejected accusations on Saturday that his country’s forces have bombed civilians in Syria, saying this was “just not true”.

Mr Kerry yesterday said Moscow must change its targeting against legitimate opposition groups, at the Munich Security Conference.

Valls also warned that the European project could “disappear” if policymakers were not careful.

“We need to have peace, we need to have negotiations, and for that, we need to stop bombings against civilians”, Valls said during his speech in Munich.

The White House said Obama “emphasized the importance now of Russian Federation playing a constructive role by ceasing its air campaign against moderate opposition forces in Syria”.

For its part, Russian Federation denied Saturday that it is bombing civilians in Syria, insisting instead that it is protecting itself from militants.

Prime Minister Medvedev: “If he [Kerry] wants to get a long war, then they can start ground operations and suchlike”.

Both leaders supported the tasks of achieving ceasefire and delivering humanitarian aid, while agreeing to intensify cooperation through diplomatic and other channels to implement the agreement reached at the ISSG meeting.

“Almost every day we are accused of making new awful threats either against North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as a whole, against Europe, or against the USA or other countries”.

Yesterday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey and Saudi Arabia would support a coalition ground operation and that Riyadh would be sending planes to Turkey to fight extremists.

Russia annexed Crimea, where it has a critical warm-water naval base in Sevastopol, from Ukraine in 2014, and gained possession of the seaport of Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea, from Germany at the end of World War II.

The US Secretary of State John Kerry said Syria crisis should be settled on a political track, urging parties to take advantage of current opportunity to end the conflicts. “And they have done so by the use of armed force”, said Norbert Roettgen, head of the foreign affairs committee in the German parliament and a member of Merkel’s conservative party.

Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama have held a telephone conversation about the Syrian war and the unresolved conflict in Ukraine.

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said 70 percent of his country’s population is under 35 and have grown up in the chaos of a lawless state after the government collapsed in 1991.