US Secretary of State John Kerry yesterday headed to Moscow to again seek deeper Russian cooperation in the war against the Islamic State group in Syria, but he faces strong opposition from defense and intelligence officials who argue that Washington and Moscow have diametrically opposite objectives in the country.
Kerry’s trip, which US Department of State officials say is his second to Moscow this year and his third in 12 months, takes place as US-Russian relations have worsened with tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions, aggressive Russian maneuvers toward US aircraft and vessels and a disregard for a cessation of hostilities in Syria, where Russia has bombed US-backed rebels.
Relations between Moscow and Washington also remain strained over the Ukraine crisis and what the Kremlin considers NATO’s unjustified activities along its borders, raising fears that disagreements could escalate into confrontations, either accidental in Syria or the result of miscalculations in the air and naval encounters from the Baltics to the Black Sea.
Yet Kerry, it seems, still hopes for closer collaboration with Russia, to the disbelief of many officials who say Washington has no strategy on how to deal with the challenges Russia poses in Europe and Syria.
“It isn’t clear why the [US] secretary of state thinks he can enlist the Russians to support the administration’s goals in Syria,” one US intelligence official said.
“He’s ignoring the fact that the Russians and their Syrian allies have made no distinction between bombing ISIS [the Islamic State group] and killing members of the moderate opposition, including some people that we’ve trained,” the official said. “Why would we share intelligence and targeting information with people who’ve been doing that?”
US intelligence officers are incensed by the administration’s continued overtures to Russia, in part because they say the Russians knew that two rebel camps they bombed this week were far from any Islamic State militants and housed US-backed rebels or their families.
The first attack, on Monday, killed at least 123 people and injured scores more, many of them CIA-trained rebels and military or intelligence officers from allied Arab countries, three US intelligence officials said.
The second, on Tuesday, killed at least 12 rebel fighters at a nearby base, they said.
The camps, the officials said, are in a no-man’s-land on Syria’s border with Jordan devoid of any Syrian troops or Islamic State militants and the Russians attacked it deliberately, the officials said.
It was not immediately possible to seek comment from officials in Moscow.
Other officials argue it is naive to think that because the Russians say they, too, are seeking a negotiated end to Syria’s civil war — which, according to the UN, has claimed about 400,000 lives — Moscow’s goal is compatible with that of the US and its Arab and European allies.
“The Russians want a settlement that would keep [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad or some replacement acceptable to them in power,” said a US defense official, who like others who discussed the schism in the administration agreed to do so only on condition of anonymity.
“The [US] president has said that [al-]Assad has got to go, and our allies, especially the Saudis, hold that view very strongly. In fact, they keep asking us why we’re cozying up to Moscow.”
Al-Assad said in an interview broadcast yesterday that Russian President Vladimir Putin has never talked to him about leaving power, despite pressure from Washington for al-Assad to step down.
“They never said a single word regarding this,” al-Assad told NBC News when asked whether Putin or Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov had talked to him about a political transition in Syria, where a civil war has raged since 2011.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion