Putin told to target Islamic State only
Nations jointly urge Russia to refocus airstrikes in Syria
PARIS — With Russian warplanes bombing Syria for a third day, French President Francois Hollande told President Vladimir Putin on Friday that Moscow’s airstrikes must be confined to attacking Islamic State militants, not other rebels opposing the Damascus government.
Hollande used a meeting on Ukraine to address Western concerns that Russia’s airstrikes would serve to strengthen Syrian President Bashar Assad by targeting rebels — perhaps including some aligned with the U.S. — rather than hitting Islamic State fighters it has promised to attack.
Allies in a U.S.-led coalition that is conducting its own air campaign in Syria called on Russia to cease attacks on the Syrian opposition and to focus on fighting the Islamic State group.
A joint statement by France, Turkey, the U.S. Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Britain expressed concern that Russia’s actions will “only fuel more extremism and radicalization.”
The Russian Defense Ministry released images showing that its jets hit an Islamic State-held area near its de facto capital of Raqqa in northern Syria on Thursday. It said there were 14 new missions Friday, including targets in Idlib and Hama provinces.
Hollande said he told Putin that only one of Russia’s strikes in three days hit at the Islamic State, also known as Daesh and ISIL.
Hollande said the other strikes were on areas controlled by the opposition.
“Russia has always been involved in Syria. Since the beginning, Russia has supported the regime of Bashar Assad and furnished him weapons, even if it goes further now,” Hollande said. “But what I told Mr. Putin is that the strikes must concern Daesh, and only Daesh.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who also attended the meeting with Putin, added that the leaders “said very clearly that Daesh was the enemy that we needed to fight.”
“We also said that we needed a political solution for Syria that should take into consideration the opposition’s interests and that opposition has always had our support,” she said.
In Washington, President Barack Obama said Russia’s military campaign fails to distinguish between terrorist groups and moderate rebel forces with a legitimate interest in a negotiated end to the civil war. He called Russia’s military involvement, including airstrikes, a self-defeating exercise that will move the Syrian conflict further away from a solution.
“It’s only strengthening ISIL, and that’s not good for anybody,” Obama said.
He said he hoped Putin would come to realize that allying Russia with Iran to try to keep Assad in power “is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire, and it won’t work. And they will be there for a while if they don’t take a different course.”
Obama also defended the U.S. response in Syria and said the conflict would not turn into a “proxy war” between the United States and Russia.
Putin left the Paris meeting without comment — and without appearing alongside the French and German leaders.
His spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the leaders “talked at length about Syrian affairs,” and the Russian leader briefed Hollande about how the Russian operation is going.
Putin reiterated Russia’s commitment to coordinate airstrikes “with the interested parties,” Peskov said.
At the United Nations, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem welcomed the Russian intervention. He told the General Assembly that Moscow’s bombing campaign was based on his government’s request and was effective because it supports Syria’s efforts to combat terrorism.
But he also took a swipe at the U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria.
“Terrorism cannot be fought only from the air, and all of the previous operations to combat it have only served its spread and outbreak,” al-Moallem said. “Airstrikes are useless unless they are conducted in cooperation with the Syrian army, the only force in Syria that is combating terrorism.”