US, Russia talks on Syria to go into Monday; no deal yet

Kerry and Lavrov also met on Sunday but the two officials could not reach an agreement on ending the years-long conflict in Syria.

Emerging from his first meeting with Theresa May since the British prime minister took power earlier this summer, President Barack Obama reaffirmed America’s close bilateral relationship with the United Kingdom.

“At the Antalya summit, we persistently told all leaders that we could solve the migrant crisis by setting up a safe zone”, Erdogan said in China. “To the extent that there are children and women and innocent civilians who can get food and medical supplies and get some relief from the constant terror of bombings, that’s worth the effort”.

The exchange came after talks between Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov failed to result in a Syria ceasefire agreement.

– if the agreement were respected, the United States could share intelligence to allow Russian forces to target the group formerly known as al Nusra.

The agreement required the Syrian government and Russian Federation to avoid bombing opposition-held areas – including where more moderate insurgent groups are operating close to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, previously the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front.

Obama and President Vladimir Putin were pictured on Monday locked in an unfriendly stare, clearly with little love lost between them. When Russia started bombing targets in Syria past year, the United States declared the intervention an act of desperation and said its coalition fighting IS was not coordinating with Moscow.

President Barack Obama has become the first sitting USA president to visit the isolated, landlocked Southeast Asian nation of Laos.

A German spokesman said Hollande discussed Ukraine with US President Barack Obama and Merkel in Hangzhou on Monday, but gave no details.

“What we can not do is have a situation in which, certainly, this becomes the wild, wild West, where countries that have significant cyber capacity start engaging in unhealthy competition or conflict through these means”, Obama said.

Moscow has backed Assad and Russian warplanes have been targeting the opposition for almost a year, while Washington has supported some rebel groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army.

But the US has always been skeptical of the military coordination part of the deal, because it says Russian Federation has mainly targeted moderate, USA -backed opposition groups in a bid to prop up Assad.

Finally giving in to the enormous pressure of the Turkish government, US President Barack Obama has announced that Washington will cooperate with Ankara and take all possible actions against those involved in July’s failed military coup in Turkey.

Obama said on Sunday that Russian participation was essential. The Kurds are the most effective US-backed anti-Daesh force, but the Turks consider them to be terrorists.

“Our hope is never to see a belt of terrorism, a corridor of terrorism, emerging around our region”, Erdogan said.