Russia says not crucial to keep Syria’s Assad in power

It came as Russian jets bombed 24 targets in Syria using co-ordinates supplied by “opposition representatives” – the first time Moscow has claimed to work with opposition groups since the start of its air offensive.

A member of a coalition force monitors the horizon in Al Hol in the Syrian Hasakeh province, some 650 kilometres northeast of Damascus, near the Iraqi border. Delil Souleiman/AFP Photo

MOSCOW // Keeping Syrian president Bashar Al Assad in power is not crucial for Moscow, a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

When asked if saving Mr Al Assad was a matter of principal for Russia, Maria Zakharova said: “Absolutely not, we’ve never said that.”

“What we did say is a regime change in Syria could become a local or even regional catastrophe,” she told the Ekho Moskvy radio station, adding that “only the Syrian people can decide the president’s fate”.

Also on Tuesday, Russian jets bombed 24 targets in Syria using co-ordinates supplied by “opposition representatives” – the first time Moscow has claimed to work with opposition groups since the start of its air offensive.

“The co-ordinates of all of these targets were given to us by opposition representatives,” said senior military official Andrei Kartapolov, without specifying with which groups Moscow had co-operated.

Mr Kartapolov said Moscow’s jets hit targets close to Palmyra, Deir Ezzor, Ithriya and eastern Aleppo with assistance from the opposition, destroying “terrorist” command posts, munition stores and anti-aircraft artillery.

Moscow has been bombing targets in Syria since September 30, when it launched an offensive in support of forces loyal to president Al Assad against ISIL and other “terrorist” groups.

But the United States and its allies, who are involved in a separate air campaign against ISIL, have accused Moscow of primarily hitting more moderate groups fighting Mr Al Assad’s regime.

Meanwhile, a senior Russian official said that Syrian government officials and members of the country’s splintered opposition could meet in Moscow next week.

“Next week, we will invite opposition representatives to a consultation in Moscow,” deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

“The meeting ... will possibly be with the participation of government representatives,” Mr Bogdanov added. He did not say which opposition members would be invited.

After initially dismissing Syrian opposition groups fighting its regional ally, president Bashar Al Assad, Moscow has shown increasing flexibility as it steps up diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict that has killed some 250,000 and displaced millions.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov will meet UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura in Moscow on Wednesday to discuss attempts to start a dialogue between Damascus and the Syrian opposition, Moscow’s foreign ministry said.

At international peace talks in Vienna on Friday, Moscow said it wanted opposition groups to participate in future discussions on the Syria crisis and exchanged a list of 38 names with Saudi Arabia.

The list included mostly former and current members of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SNC), a Western-backed political opposition block, Russia's Kommersant newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Among those named were former SNC head Moaz Al Khatib and incumbent president Khaled Khoja, Kommersant said, as well as representatives from a diverse range of political, religious and ethnic groups including the Muslim Brotherhood and a Christian pro-democracy movement.

Mr Khoja said last week that a Russian campaign of air strikes in Syria was intended to prop up Mr Al Assad and had helped ISIL.

The SNC has been accused of slipping into virtual irrelevance on the battlefield in Syria as extremist and Kurdish groups have grown stronger. But it remains one of the main parties in international discussions to end the four-year-old civil war.

The coalition boycotted Syria peace talks held in Russia in January and April, distrustful of the Kremlin and dismissing Damascus rivals who attended as token opposition, but it sent a delegation to Moscow in August.

In Syria, warplanes pounded the ISIL stronghold of Raqqa on Tuesday, killing at least 23 people including 13 extremists, a monitoring group said.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that either the regime or Russian air force was believed to have carried out the strikes.

“Thirteen members of the Islamic State group and 10 civilians were killed in at least 16 air raids on the group’s positions and premises in several parts of Raqa city,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

However, the number of dead could be higher, he said, as the toll relied on information from only one hospital in the area due to security restrictions.

Raqqa has previously been targeted by Syrian government air strikes, as well as raids by the US-led coalition fighting ISIL. It has also been the target of a Russian bombing campaign, launched in late September.

Elsewhere, the Observatory said a Kurdish-Arab alliance had advanced against ISIL in the north-eastern province of Hassakeh.

The group said at least seven ISIL fighters had been killed in clashes with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and air strikes by the US-led coalition on Tuesday.

The SDF said on Saturday that it had begun its first offensive since announcing the anti-ISIL alliance last month in Hassakeh.

* Agencies