Syria de-escalation plan goes into effect

LYNN BERRY

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MOSCOW — A Russian plan to set up de-escalation zones in Syria is to go into effect at midnight on Friday, but it will be at least another month before all the details are worked out and the safe areas are fully established, according to Russian officials.

Prospects for the success of the deal — agreed to by Russia, Turkey and Iran — are undermined by the failure of Syrian rebel groups who oppose President Bashar Assad to sign on to it.

Russian military officials said the plan, which was agreed to in Syria talks in Kazakhstan on Thursday, envisions establishing four safe zones that could would bring relief for hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians and encourage refugees to return.

Russia, Turkey and Iran are to enforce the zones, but Russian general staff official Col.-Gen. Sergei Rudskoi said Friday that other countries could participate. He did not elaborate on who those countries might be.

The de-escalation zones to be established in Syria will be closed to military aircraft from the U.S.led coalition.

Under the Russian plan, Assad’s air force would halt flights over the designated areas across the wartorn country.

But the Pentagon said the deescalation agreement will not affect the U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State.

“The coalition will continue to target ISIS wherever they operate to ensure they have no sanctuary,” said Pentagon spokesman Marine Maj. Adrian J.T. RankineGalloway.

Rudskoi also told reporters that Russia wanted to restore an agreement with the United States to coordinate air operations over Syria and reduce the risk of aircraft colliding. That arrangement was suspended last month after the U.S. Tomahawk missile barrage on a Syrian air base, fired in response to a deadly chemical gas attack in Syria that was blamed on Assad’s government.

Russian diplomat Alexander Lavrentyev said “the operation of aviation in the de-escalation zones, especially of the forces of the international coalition, is absolutely not envisaged, either with notification or without. This question is closed.”

He said the U.S.-led coalition aircraft would still be able to operate against Islamic State in specific areas.

ZEIN AL RIFAI/GETTY IMAGES A rebel fighter waves at civilians arriving by bus in al-Bab, Syria, in the northern province of Aleppo, after leaving al-Waer, the last opposition-held neighbourhood of the central city of Homs, on Friday.

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