‘No Bashar al-Assad in the future’, says Saudi foreign minister

But Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Friday that Assad must step aside to make it possible to defeat ISIL in Syria.

Italy said the emergency aid was decided after a humanitarian truce agreement was reached earlier Friday at a meeting in Germany.

More than 250,000 people have been killed in Syria since 2011. We’ll hear from a Syrian doctor in a moment about the dire conditions there, and we’ll explore the options the USA could take to help end the violence because this new plan may not do that.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry praised the agreement in Munich as a significant accomplishment in the five-year war, but he noted that a cessation of hostilities, if achieved, would only be a “pause” in the fighting and that more work would be needed to turn it into a full-fledged ceasefire.

But with the Syrian city of Aleppo now under siege from pro-government forces backed by Russian Federation, the U.S. is grappling to find a good strategy, and as the Washington Post reported, “Saudi Arabia’s commitment is potentially pivotal in securing the help of other nations”.

“There is a possibility there will be additional ground troops”, Kerry said.

“If the coalition should decide to deploy Special Forces in the fight against IS in Syria, Saudi-Arabia will be ready to participate”, he said, using the initials IS to refer to Islamic State.

The U.N. envoy for Syria says the key to the agreement reached on a cessation of hostilities in Syria within a week is that it is “a commitment” by key nations not just a declaration.

World powers on Friday announced an ambitious plan to stop fighting in Syria within a week, but doubts have emerged over its viability, especially because it did not include ISIS or Al-Qaeda’s local branch.

He warned, however, the involvement of other regional powers in what has become an increasingly tangled proxy war “means that the solution will take a long time and will incur a heavy price”.

Another week of fighting would give the Damascus government and its Russian, Lebanese and Iranian allies time to press on with the encirclement of Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city before the war, which they are now on the verge of capturing.

KELEMEN: Russia’s goals, though, are different from the U.S. It’s supporting Bashar al-Assad’s government and doesn’t seem to be moved by humanitarian concerns, as Fiona Hill of the Brookings Institution points out.

“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.

“When Assad goes, the fertile environment which Daesh operates in Syria will be removed”.

The Russians have repeatedly said that they consider a number of Islamist groups fighting within the opposition to be “terrorist, ” and have used this formulation to justify air attacks that have largely targeted the anti-Assad opposition.

Both organizations are included on a list of worldwide terrorist groups.

Turkey’s foreign minister said on Friday Russia was targeting schools and hospitals in Syria.

Sergei Lavrov reminded Syrian opposition on the need to allow for humanitarian access in their areas and also to meet their obligation in the upcoming Geneva talks. “Saudi leaders would be bitterly criticized at home if they deployed forces and were not seen as taking on the Assad regime, which has been viewed by Saudis and other Sunni Muslims as killing innocent Sunnis”.

The sides in Munich called for a resumption of political peace talks, which collapsed last week in Geneva before they began after the opposition demanded a halt to bombardment.

The deal appeared to be the result of a compromise between the United States, which had wanted an immediate cease-fire, and Russian Federation, which had proposed one to start on March 1.