Defeating ISIL only possible with change of Syrian leader – Obama

Its repeated vetoes, mainly on intervention in Syria or calling for investigations into alleged atrocities committed by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, have led to criticism that the Kremlin is undermining the council.

At the United Nations both Putin and US President Obama bared their thoughts on Syria, highlighting major differences though a few progress was made.

But Russian Federation has been steadily building up its forces in Syria and USA officials say such strikes could start any time.

Predictably, Putin and Obama failed to resolve their dispute over the future role of Bashar al-Assad, with the USA leader branding him a child-killing tyrant and the Kremlin chief saying the world should support him in his battle against the Islamic State group. He repeated his criticism that Putin is the better leader when compared with Obama.

“Sometime between the formation of this council and elections, the theory of this is that – whether it’s a day or a week or a month, I don’t know- Assad would sail into the sunset”, Al-Jubeir said.

On Tuesday the U.S. leader said removing Assad was a vital step to defeating the Islamic State group, which has taken advantage of the chaos in Syria to bring large parts of the country and neighbouring Iraq under its rule.

Putin’s spokesman, Peskov, said the decision meant Russian Federation would be practically the only country in Syria to be conducting operations “on a legitimate basis” and at the request of “the legitimate president of Syria”.

The Pentagon does, however, have concerns about the inclusion of the Syrian government, which the USA believes is responsible for the civil war and the rise of the Islamic State from inside Syria’s borders.

“There was agreement that Syria should be a unified country, united, that it needs to be secular, that Islamic State needs to be taken on, and that there needs to be a managed transition”, Mr Kerry said. Yaalon said Israeli warplanes on Monday targeted two Syrian artillery guns suspected of shelling inside the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

“And we raised that yesterday,” he said. But he said Israel will not tolerate advanced weapons reaching Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah, which has fought alongside Syrian troops.

Mr Obama sparred with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the Syria crisis during their duelling United Nations speeches on Monday, but the leaders agreed to work together to try to end the four-year war that has killed more than 240,000 people.