Photo:
AP Photo/ Brendan Smialowski, Pool
U.S. Secretary of state Rex Tillerson said about the impossibility of military cooperation between the US and Russia, until Moscow recognizes that in Syria, “not all the opposition are terrorists”, reports Reuters, citing diplomatic sources.
Such statement the head of foreign policy Department of the USA has made, addressing to the representatives of countries opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said the Agency.
“In the course of discussion he made it clear that the military cooperation will not, until the Russians recognize that not all the opposition are terrorists”, — the Agency quotes an unnamed diplomat.
Earlier, Russian foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the United States completely failed in the task of dissociation of moderate opposition from terrorists “dzhebhat an-Nusra.” Press Secretary of the President Dmitry Peskov also said that the US was unable to fulfill the basic obligation of the agreements on Syria to alienate so-called moderate opposition from terrorists.
In late January, Russia, Iran and Turkey as guarantors of a ceasefire in Syria agreed at talks in Astana on the establishment of a tripartite monitoring mechanism for the ceasefire. The three countries also reaffirmed their “intention to work together to combat the Islamic state and “Dzhebhat EN-Nusra” (a group banned in Russia – ed.) and to dissociate them from the factions of the Syrian armed opposition”.
Armed conflict continues in Syria since March 2011. Government troops to confront the militants of different armed groups. Data on the number of victims of the conflict differ. According to the UN, we are talking about 300 thousands of dead Syrians. The Russian Institute of Oriental studies, using data from the Syrian Central Bureau of statistics, conducted its own study, according to which the total number of dead Syrians is 105 thousand people, the majority civilians were killed by the militants so-called moderate opposition.