Beirut: Russia rebuffed calls for a no-fly zone over Syria as Islamist clerics and rebels urged for retaliation against its extended bombing campaign that has targeted Daesh and other militant groups in the Arab country.
Officials from Moscow ruled out sending troops to take part in ground operations in Syria, a day after the head of the Russian parliament’s defence committee said volunteers could go to fight, including some who took part in the conflict in Ukraine. Nato, meanwhile, said Russian incursions into Turkish airspace in recent days looked deliberate.
A no-fly zone would breach Syrian sovereignty and “isn’t based on the UN Charter and international law,” Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who is Russia’s special presidential envoy to the Middle East, said in an interview published on Tuesday by the Interfax news service. “Of course, we are against this. You need to respect the sovereignty of countries.”
Russia began its air campaign last week to bomb Daesh and other terror groups in Syria, its first foray outside the former Soviet Union in more than three decades. Syria’s opposition groups, including Islamist rebels, and anti-Russia fighters with Daesh have criticised the move, with many likening its intervention in Syria to the Soviet Union’s involvement in Afghanistan that began in 1979.
In Ankara, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday warned Russia against losing Ankara’s friendship, after Russian warplanes twice violated its airspace near the Syrian border.
“If Russia loses a friend like Turkey with whom it has a lot of cooperation it is going to lose a lot of things. It needs to know this,” Erdogan said in Belgium at a press conference alongside Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel broadcast on Turkish television.
In his toughest remarks yet against Russia in the current crisis, Erdogan accused Moscow and its ally Iran of working to maintain the “state terror” of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.
His comments came after Russian warplanes twice violated Turkish airspace at the weekend during Moscow’s bombing campaign in Syria aimed at bolstering the Al Assad regime.
“It is of course not possible to remain patient about this,” said Erdogan, referring to the incursions into Turkish air space.
The Kremlin said last week its campaign was designed to support Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, who is also backed by Iran. More than 50 Saudi clerics called on Syrian rebels and Muslim countries on Monday to support a “jihad” against Syria’s government and its allies.
“This is a real war on Sunnis, their countries and their identities,” said the statement. It urged the rebels to join a “jihad against the enemy of God and your enemy and Muslims will back you every way they can.”
More than 40 insurgent groups on Monday called “Russia’s military aggression in Syria a flagrant occupation” that is a “legitimate target.” The statement said: “The coming war is one that aims to liberate our land from two occupying forces: Iranian and Russian.”
Al Assad controls about a quarter of Syria and 60 per cent of the population, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war through activists. About 45 per cent of the country is under Daesh militants and the rest is controlled by Kurds, various rebels and Islamist radicals, it said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military intervention overshadowed a recent diplomatic flurry to seek a solution to the four-year civil war. While Nato is pressuring the government in Moscow to coordinate efforts to attack Daesh, Russian politicians rejected any notion of a protracted involvement in Syria.
Russia is “neither planning to, nor will participate in any ground operations,” Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament, said at talks in Amman on Tuesday with her Jordanian counterpart Abdur-Rauf Rawabdeh, Interfax reported. “We will not be dragged into the resolution of the international Syrian crisis for long.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pressed for the introduction of a no-fly zone over a safe area that would be created in Syria for refugees fleeing the fighting during talks with European Union leaders on Monday. Nato member Turkey also vowed to protect its borders after a Russian fighter jet that violated its airspace was confronted by two Turkish aircraft on October 3.
Commanders of Russia’s Air Group in Syria have “taken necessary measures to prevent such occurrences,” and have sent “relevant clarifications” to Turkey, the Defence Ministry in Moscow said on Twitter on Monday.
