Russia, Saudi to help Syria’s Assad renew dialogue with opposition

– Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem flew Thursday to Oman after a two-day visit to Tehran, amid unconfirmed reports in pro-Assad media outlets that the Omani government was trying to broker a meeting of the foreign ministers of Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

While the US conducted its first drone strike into northern Syria from bases in Turkey by targeting ISIS alone, the US has become a de facto ally of Assad, giving him no reason to stop ravaging the country.

At the moment when Mamluk was meeting Bin Salman, two groups of Syrian revolutionary forces were marching toward the countrysides of both Latakia and Hama in the north, and into the province of Suwaida in the south, as well as toward al-Mazza airport in the Damascus countryside.

He conceded that there stayed “tenacious distinctions” in the middle of Riyadh and Moscow over how to handle the Syrian clash.

The Saudi FM said: “The Kingdom has not changed its position on the Syrian crisis and there is no truth at all to any statements otherwise”.

Lavrov said Moscow would hold separate talks with Syrian opposition representatives in the coming days, including the Syrian National Coalition and Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union.

Their meeting follows Russian-Saudi talks last week in Qatar that also involved U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Mr Alani said that years of poor relations between Riyadh and Moscow, which date back to Riyadh’s backing of anti-Soviet mujaheddin groups in Afghanistan during the 1980s, had pushed “the Russians into the camp of the Iranians and Syria”. However, he said Russian Federation was not proposing a unified command.

Speaking in a joint press conference with his Saudi counterpart, Steinmeier said it was quite hard to find a solution to the ongoing conflict in Syria and that the country faced complete destruction if an immediate end to the crisis was found.

“We believe the question of Bashar Al Assad has been solved”.

They supported the rebels against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad when the civil war started four years ago.

“Iran’s clear and principled stance is to support the resistance” against Israel who has benefited much from the threats of terrorism in Syria, he added. However, Lavrov has said the talks with Kerry and Jubeir have found common ground on the need to eradicate Islamic State and bring peace to Syria, where the United Nations estimates that 250,000 people have been killed and 4 million forced to flee the country.

But he said the new leadership in Saudi Arabia since the death of King Abdullah is shaking up old assumptions.