UN Security Council aims to endorse halt in Syria fighting

Talking to media after National Security Council meeting in Washington, he vowed to defeat the so-called Islamic State.

He also said that the United States’ own air campaign, which he said has hit the militant group with 10,000 strikes so far, “continues to destroy (ISIS) forces, infrastructure and their weapons”. He directed his national security team to accelerate the U.S.-led global campaign against IS “on all fronts”.

President Barack Obama on Thursday offered scant optimism that a “cessation of hostilities” agreed to in Syria would take hold when it goes into effect this weekend.

UNITED NATIONS Russia and the United States circulated to the U.N. Security Council on Thursday a draft resolution endorsing the planned halt in fighting in Syria and council diplomats said they hoped to adopt it as soon as possible. He also reiterated that Syria’s future can not include Bashar Assad as president, which is a chief point of contention with Russian Federation and Iran, who support the Syrian leader.

Obama reached agreement earlier this week with Russian President Vladimir Putin over a partial cease-fire in the civil war in Syria set to take effect Saturday.

Mr Obama and Syrian authorities have both emphasised the truce deal does not extend to groups they each define as terrorists.

“We don’t expect the violence to end immediately”, Obama said.

“A lot of that is going to depend on whether the Syrian regime, Russian Federation and their allies live up to their commitments”, he said in remarks at the State Department.

Speaking on Russian television late Monday, Putin portrayed the agreement as the result of intense, joint work by the Russians and Americans, which he said should provide an example to the world in the fight against terrorism. That’s because the terms of the deal negotiated by Secretary of State John F. Kerry exclude the extremist group Jabhat al-Nusra, some of whose fighters are in Aleppo along with Western-backed rebels.

In Washington, it is hard to find anyone who believes the guns will truly fall silent on Saturday, and United States officials portray the truce as a test of Russia’s true support for the peace process.

Critics say it is not clear exactly where along Syria’s complicated front lines the fighting would stop and where counterterrorism operations could continue. Since 2014, the US-led coalition has also been delivering air strikes against militants in Syria and Iraq.

“They’re continuing to squeeze ISIL’s stronghold of Raqqa, cutting off highways and supply lines”, Obama said.