Paris, Moscow admit Syria at stalemate

Paris and Moscow admit Wednesday that war-torn Syria is at a stalemate, urging each other to pressure their respective allies to restore a truce and relaunch a peace process.

“Today things are blocked,” says French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault. “It is urgent to improve the situation on the ground and to encourage a resumption of negotiations. There’s no other answer,” Ayrault says after meeting in Paris with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

On Tuesday, Ayrault said he would ask Moscow “to pressure the Damascus regime to stop air strikes claiming thousands of lives, notably in Aleppo.”

But Lavrov, saying “not everything depends on the Russians,” calls on all sides to “pressure their protegé on the ground.”

“The problem will be resolved when our Western partners convince their ‘moderate’ protégés to withdraw from the positions of the Al-Nusra Front,” Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, which is fighting the Damascus regime, Lavrov says.

— AFP