Assad not gonna be happy...
Putin seeks map of forces not to bomb in Syria: France
27 Nov.`15 - Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked France to draw up a map of where groups fighting Islamic State militants operate in Syria in order not to bomb them, France's foreign minister said on Friday.
Putin seeks map of forces not to bomb in Syria: France
27 Nov.`15 - Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked France to draw up a map of where groups fighting Islamic State militants operate in Syria in order not to bomb them, France's foreign minister said on Friday.
French President Francois Hollande and Putin agreed during talks in Moscow on Thursday to exchange intelligence on Islamic State and other rebel groups to improve the effectiveness of their aerial bombing campaigns in Syria. "He asked us to draw up a map of forces that are not terrorists and are fighting Daesh (Islamic State). He committed to not bombing them once we've provided that," Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on RTL after accompanying Hollande to Moscow.
The West has accused Moscow of targeting mostly Western- backed rebel groups fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad instead of Islamic State. France has stepped up it aerial bombing campaign of Islamic State targets in Syria since the group claimed responsibility for attacks in Paris on Nov. 13 that killed 130 people.
The militants have also claimed the downing of a Russian airliner that broke up over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Oct. 31, killing all 224 people on board. "There is now one point which everyone agrees and that is the objective of destroying Daesh," Fabius said referring to the Arabic acronym for Islamic State. "I think on that we are progressing." He added that immediate priorities for both sides in the coming weeks would be to free Raqqa, Islamic State's Syrian stronghold, as well as targeting oil infrastructure controlled by the group. "It is the neurological center of Daesh, where attacks, especially those in France, originated," he said.
ASSAD'S FATE