AMN /
President Barack Obama has said that United States will do everything to make the ceasefire agreement a success. Ending the conflicts in Syria and Iraq is instrumental to defeating the Islamic State terrorist network, he said Thursday after meeting with top security officials at the State Department, reports US media.
The situation in Syria and Iraq is “one of the most complex the world has seen in recent times,” Obama said, noting that the militant Islamic State group “is entrenched, including in urban areas, using civilians as human shields.” He also said there are indications that the flow of foreign fighters into Syria is slowing, making it harder for the militants to replenish their ranks.
On the ther hamnd Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday, hosted a meeting in Moscow of the Russian-Arab Cooperation forum, where he pledged that the gathering would focus on ending the conflict in Syria.
Lavrov also said the cease-fire’s success depended in part on the U.S.-led coalition refraining from talking about “some sort of Plan B, about preparing a ground operation, about the creation of some sort of useless buffer zone,” AFP reported.
If Russia and the Syrian government don’t respect the cease-fire agreement, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has warned that Washington would consider a “Plan B.”
Meanwhile Russian warplanes on Friday continued bombing what the Kremlin calls “terrorist organizations” amid reports that it has intensified attacks on rebel strongholds.
according to VOA, the truce, brokered by the United States and Russia, is scheduled to take effect at midnight Damascus time (2200 GMT). The Syrian opposition’s umbrella group, the High Negotiations Committee, said in a statement that 97 groups have committed to observing the cease-fire.
But the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights charged that Russia has accelerated its attacks on rebels opposed to the Syrian government. The airstrikes were “more intense than usual,” the Agence France-Presse news group reported. Targets include areas east of Damascus, northern Homs province and part of Aleppo province.