Obama, Putin clash over Syria in dueling speeches

UNITED NATIONS — President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin sharply disagreed Monday over the chaos in Syria, with Obama urging a political transition to replace the Syrian president but Putin warning it would be a mistake to abandon the current government.

After dueling speeches at the United Nations General Assembly, Obama and Putin also met privately for 90 minutes — their first face-to-face encounter in nearly a year.

The discussions, which opened with a stony-faced handshake, appeared to do little to ease differences about reaching a political resolution to end Syria’s civil war. U.S. officials said Putin agreed with Obama about a need for a political transition in Syria that would include bringing elements of the Syrian opposition into the government, but that they remained at odds about the fate of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The U.S. has long called for Assad to leave power. Russia, meanwhile, has called Assad’s military the only viable option for defeating the Islamic State, a militant group that has taken advantage of the vacuum created by the civil war.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Putin suggested Russia might be willing to join air strikes against the Islamic State. “We’re thinking about it,” Putin said, though he added Russia would not send ground troops to Syria.

In his address to the U.N. earlier Monday, Obama said he was open to working with Russia, as well as Iran, to bring Syria’s war to an end. He called for a “managed transition” that would result in the ouster of Assad.

“We must recognize that there cannot be, after so much bloodshed, so much carnage, a return to the prewar status quo,” Obama said.

Putin, however, urged the world to stick with Assad.

“We believe it’s a huge mistake to refuse to cooperate with the Syrian authorities, with the government forces, those who are bravely fighting terror face-to-face,” Putin said during his first appearance at the U.N. gathering in a decade.

Obama and Putin’s disparate views of the grim situation in Syria left little indication of how the two countries might work together to end a conflict that has killed more than 250,000 people and resulted in a flood of refugees.

Russia has long shielded Assad from U.N. sanctions and continues to provide the Syrian government with weapons.