Paris: French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Monday that air strikes in Syria must target Daesh terrorists but also other groups “considered as terrorists.”
Fabius said a statement by President Francois Hollande on Friday that Russian air strikes must target “Daesh and only Daesh”, did not exclude other groups like the Al Nusra Front.
“Of course, it is a concise formulation, it is Daesh and groups considered as terrorists,” Fabius told Europe 1 radio in an interview, referring to Hollande’s statement.
Moscow, which has launched more than 70 air strikes in Syria since last Wednesday, has come under fire for targeting Western-backed moderate opposition and Daesh fighters alike in their bid to bolster President Bashar Al Assad.
President Barack Obama has called Russia’s dramatic intervention a “recipe for disaster”, while British Prime Minister David Cameron urged Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday to “change direction” in Syria and recognise that Assad must be replaced.
Fabius warned of the risk that the Syrian conflict could turn into a wider religious war.
“When you see a conflict which at first was a civil war, becoming a regional war involving international powers, Russia, Iran, the US, the risks are serious,” he said.
“The most terrifying risk is that the conflict becomes religious: If you have Shiite (Muslim) populations on one side with their allies, and Sunni populations on the other side with their allies, it is an inferno which can be extremely dangerous.”
Al Assad is an Alawite, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, who is supported by regional Shiite heavyweight Iran as well as militia like Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
On the other side Sunni powers like Saudi Arabia and Qatar are opposed to Al Assad and have backed the Islamist groups fighting him. They are also taking part in a US-led coalition carrying out an air campaign against Daesh.
France, which has been targeting Daesh in Iraq for the past year, began striking the group in Syria eight days ago.
On Sunday, British Foreign Minister Phillip Hammond accused Russia of engaging in “classic asymmetric warfare” in Syria by using its military clout to prop up President Bashar Al Assad under the guise of attacking Daesh.
Russia last week began striking targets in Syria - a dramatic escalation of foreign involvement in the civil war which has been criticised by the West as an attempt to prop up Al Assad, rather than its purported aim of attacking Daesh.
“It looks like a classic bit of Russian asymmetric warfare -you have a strong propaganda message that says you’re doing one thing while in fact you are doing something completely different and when challenged you just flatly deny it,” Philip Hammond told Reuters in an interview in Manchester.
He said Britain had held discussions with Russia but kept on getting the same response - that Moscow was attacking Daesh in Syria.
“You try talking to the Russians,” he said. “They just keep repeating their position - that is by the way also the Iranian position - and it is just incredible.” He said that Britain needed “absolute clarity” that Al Assad would not be part of Syria’s future.
“That’s not some random bee in the bonnet that I’ve got; it’s that without that commitment we will never get the broad spectrum of Syrian opposition groups to sit down and agree around a table how we take forward the discussion about Syria’s future,” he said.
Hammond dismissed proposals put forward by Russia and Iran for elections, saying Syria was “a million miles away” from being able to hold a free and fair vote.
“In a country where 250,000 people have been killed and 12 million people have been displaced, half of them outside the country - how can you talk about free and fair elections?” he said.
Hammond said the key to ending the suffering caused by the four-year civil war was a managed transition to peace - even if it meant Al Assad retained power temporarily.
“If the price for doing that is that we have to accept that Al Assad will remain as titular head of state for a period of time, do I really care if that’s three days, three weeks, three months or even longer? I don’t think I do,” he said.
But Hammond said that for such a transition, Al Assad should make a pledge not to run in any future election and that he would give up control over Syria’s security apparatus.
He added that there was no agreement with Moscow and Tehran on such a transition.
“The key is that there must be a transition - at the moment there is no agreement with the Russians and the Iranians even that there should be a transition,” he said.
Hammond also said Russia represented a threat to the international system upon which Britain’s security depended, saying it had shown that it did not respect diplomatic norms.
He pointed to Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region last year as an example of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin’s approach to international law.
But, he said that Moscow still had an important role to play in the Middle East and that Britain could not afford to ignore Russia’s role in negotiating peace in Syria.
“It would not be in our own interests to say that we will not talk to the Russians about the situation in Syria because we object so strongly to what they are doing in Ukraine,” he said.
“We have to compartmentalise these disputes,” calling for Russia to re-engage with the international system.
“We just need a Russia that accepts there are rules in the system, and you can’t throw your toys out of the pram and resort to military force every time you don’t get your way,” he said.
