US proposes plan to Russia to avoid armed conflict in Syria

washington — The United States has proposed to Russia a plan for managing an increasingly complex battlefield in Syria’s main oil-producing region, where United States-backed forces fighting extremists are in conflict with Russian-backed Syrian forces.

Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford declined to describe the proposal in detail, but said the Russian military is eager to find ways to avoid an armed United StatesRussian conflict in the area around Deir El Zour on the Euphrates River.

The US sees that area, from Deir El Zour down the Euphrates River Valley to Al Qaim on the Iraqi side of the border, as the next major battleground in the evolving coalition campaign to destroy the Daesh group.

“We have a proposal that we’re working on with the Russians right now,” Dunford said at a news conference with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Asked whether the proposal to Russia would address the problem of a Syrian army presence in Deir El Zour, Dunford said:

“It will. It will. And we’ve talked about that as a specific area that requires” avoiding US-Russian conflict. Russia’s support for the Syrian government is a complicating factor in the battle to rid Syria of Daesh. That was demonstrated on Thursday when the United Staes bombed a contingent of pro-Syrian government forces in southeastern Syria that Mattis said were advancing in a threatening way toward a rebel camp near the Jordanian border where US advisers were present.

Mattis told reporters those forces targeted by airstrikes were “Iranian-directed forces.”

Russia on Friday denounced the US airstrike.

“Whatever the reason for the US strike was, it was illegitimate and marked another flagrant violation of Syria’s sovereignty,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in Cyprus. Three years into America’s campaign, President Donald Trump is pushing for an accelerated campaign to destroy Daesh. —