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MOSCOW 'READY TO LIAISE WITH US'

Russia launches air strikes against IS in Syria

UNITED NATION, September 30, 2015

Russia said it launched air strikes against Islamic State in Syria on Wednesday after President Vladimir Putin secured his parliament's unanimous backing to intervene to prop up the Kremlin's closest Middle East ally.

Moscow gave Washington just an hour's notice of the strikes, which set in train Russia's biggest play in the region since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, a US official said.

Both US and France suspect Moscow of shoring up support for President Bashar al-Assad against other opposition groups in the civil war.

Targets in the Homs area appeared to have been struck, but not areas held by Islamic State, the US official said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said however that its attacks were directed at Islamic State military targets.

Meanwhile, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it was ready to open "standing channels of communication" with the US-led coalition bombing Islamic State militants in Syria in a bid to boost the fight against "terrorist groups."

"We have informed the authorities of the US and other members of the coalition created by the Americans and are ready to forge standing channels of communication to ensure the maximum effective fight against the terrorist groups," Lavrov told the United Nations Security Council.

Russia circulated a draft council resolution that Putin has said would be "aimed at coordinating the actions of all forces that confront Islamic State." Lavrov said it would be discussed over the next month.

But Lavrov added: "Mindful of the growth of the threat posed by ISIL (Islamic State) there is a need now to forge practical cooperation of the activities of all forces which are countering terrorism."

A US-led coalition has already been bombing Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but Putin derided US efforts to end the Syria war at the United Nations on Monday, suggesting a broader and more coordinated coalition was needed to defeat the militants.

"The military aim of our operations will be exclusively to provide air support to Syrian government forces in their struggle against ISIS (Islamic State)," Sergei Ivanov, the Kremlin's Chief-of-Staff, said before reports that the strikes had begun.

Russia has been steadily dispatching more and more military aircraft to a base in Latakia, regarded as an Assad stronghold, after the Syrian government suffered a series of battlefield reverses.

Moscow has already sent military experts to a recently established command center in Baghdad which is coordinating air strikes and ground troops in Syria, a Russian official told Reuters.

Ivanov, the Kremlin's Chief of Staff, said Russia's missions would be limited and not open-ended. He precluded the use of ground troops.

"As our president has already said, the use of ground troops has been ruled out," said Ivanov.

Russia's involvement in Syria will be a further challenge for Moscow, which is already intervening in Ukraine at a time when its own economy is suffering from low oil prices and Western sanctions.

Opinion polls also show Russian voters have little appetite for a long campaign, with painful memories of the Soviet Union's 1979-89 intervention in Afghanistan, in which thousands of Soviet troops were killed, still fresh.

Lavrov said Russia backed UN efforts to get the Syrian parties talking and said there was a need for "an inclusive and balanced outside assistance for the political process."

He said this group should consist of Russia, the US, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, the UAE, Jordan, Qatar, the European Union and China.

"We believe that such a composition of outside sponsors acting in a united way are in a position to assist Syrians in reaching agreement based on common objectives to prevent the creation of an extremist caliphate," Lavrov said.-Reuters




Tags: Putin | Russia | attack | Islamic State |

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