Putin says new elections key for ending Syrian crisis

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj.

“The status quo in Syria will continue to present increasingly dire, if not disastrous, humanitarian, diplomatic and terrorism-related challenges”, the memo said as quoted by the New York Times.

Amusingly, the whole thing is wrapped in a narrative that the State Department is ready and willing to “mutiny” against Obama’s pacifism, because you see it was Obama who has been so successful in extricating and removing U.S. troops from harm’s way in both the middle east and Afghanistan.

Obama’s Syria policy has been predicated on the goal of avoiding deeper military entanglements in the chaotic Middle East, and has been widely criticized as hesitant and risk-averse.

Carter says that if the Russians intentionally attacked USA -supported Syrian rebels, then they were contradicting their stated aim of fighting the Islamic State.

Asked about the strikes Friday, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said it raised questions about whether the Russians were actually in Syria to fight Islamic extremists.

The memo calls for “a judicious use of stand-off and air weapons, which would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed USA -led diplomatic process”.

The US has called on Assad to step down. The official said the cable was unlikely to alter that, or shift Obama’s focus from the battle against the persistent and spreading threat posed by the Islamic State militant group.

US and Russian forces in Syria have had tense relations since the country devolved into civil war.

“None of the options are good”, Obama said in Saudi Arabia in April.

The senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that since the letter was directed to Kerry, he would deal with it for now, and it would be up to him whether “elevate it” to the attention of Obama and other top advisers. But those who signed have no plans to resign, the source familiar with the matter said.

Whoever leaked the memo may have been looking past Obama’s tenure. President Barack Obama has balked at taking military action against Mr. Assad, while Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has promised a more hawkish stance toward the Syrian leader.

That came hours after US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Moscow that Washington’s patience was running out over breaches of the nationwide ceasefire.

Putin said that Syrian President Bashar Assad, who visited Moscow previous year, has pledged to help achieve that. Moscow began air strikes in Syria last September. Nine days earlier, a Sarin gas attack killed as many as 1,400 Syrians.

At least 250,000 people have died in Syria’s civil war, while more than 6.6 million have been internally displaced and another 4.8 million people have fled the country.

Although no USA forces were in the area at the time of Thursday’s strikes, the US military activated the emergency communications channels with Moscow to tell Russian Federation to stop striking the area, the official said.

Carter also says that in Iraq, government forces have gained control of “a portion” of IS-held Fallujah.