Syrian rebels yesterday rejected Russian demands that they withdraw from Aleppo by tomorrow evening, an official in one insurgent faction said.
“This is completely out of the question. We will not give up the city of Aleppo to the Russians and we won’t surrender,” Zakaria Malahifji of the Fastaqim rebel group said.
Russia’s defence ministry said rebels and civilians would be allowed to leave the eastern opposition-held part of Aleppo and signalled it would extend a moratorium on air strikes inside the city. However, Malahifji said there were no safe exit corridors, as Russia had stated.
“It’s not true. Civilians and fighters are not leaving. Civilians are afraid of the regime, they don’t trust it. And the fighters are not surrendering,” he said.
Russia seeks “honest co-operation” for a political solution in Syria – “the sooner the better,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said yesterday as Moscow declared a brief truce in the war-ravaged city of Aleppo.
“We hope our partners will draw the necessary conclusions (so that) we will all aim for honest co-operation for a political process involving both the government and opposition forces,” Lavrov said at the start of an official visit to Greece.
“We must come to an agreement, the sooner the better,” he said.
However, Lavrov insisted that Washington help enforce a November 2015 United Nations Security Council resolution condemning support for extremist groups in Syria.
“When we adopted this resolution, I remember US Secretary of State John Kerry’s words. He said: ‘Whoever wants to be part of (the political) process must sever links to terrorists’,” Lavrov said through a translator.
“Almost a year has passed and we await these words to be carried out,” he added.
Russia has accused the US-led coalition of failing to rein in Syrian rebels, warning that the chances of a political settlement to the crisis was now remote.
“The United States are a great power, but that does not mean that everyone else must play by America’s terms,” Lavrov said. “If they follow this policy we will not be able to do anything in the world.”
In turn, the West has accused Moscow of committing possible war crimes in Aleppo through indiscriminate bombing to support a brutal Syrian government offensive.
Moscow has been conducting a bombing campaign in Syria in support of long-time ally Bashar al-Assad since September 2015.
Meanwhile, the head of the Turkish armed forces, General Hulusi Akar, held “constructive” talks with his Russian counterparts on the situation in Aleppo and the fight against Islamic State, the Turkish military said in a statement yesterday.
Russia and Turkey, a Nato member, back opposing sides in the Syrian conflict.
In recent months they have been normalising ties that broke down a year ago when Turkey shot down a Russian warplane along its border with Syria.
Akar visited Russia on Tuesday with Turkey’s intelligence chief to discuss military co-operation and regional developments.
“The subjects taken up in the talks were a settlement to the clashes in Syria and normalisation of the situation in Aleppo as well as continuing to develop coordination between the two countries with the aim of ending the threat from Daesh (Islamic State),” the Turkish statement said.


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