<\/p>\n
Washington has \u201csuspended\u201d bilateral contacts with Moscow over the Syrian crisis, the US State Department said. Russian Foreign Ministry said it was “disappointed” by the decision and accused the US of seeking to shift blame for its own failure in Syria.<\/p>\n
US officials had threatened for a week to withdraw from the Syrian peace process, after the latest ceasefire negotiated by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Secretary of State John Kerry collapsed amid bloody fighting.
\nWhile contacts between US and Russian military to \u201cdeconflict\u201d encounters between their aircraft in Syrian skies will continue, the US is withdrawing personnel that was dispatched for the purpose of setting up the Joint Implementation Center (JIC) for the ceasefire, agencies reported citing the State Department.<\/p>\n
There is “nothing more for the US and Russia to talk about” in Syria, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Monday.<\/p>\n
Russia has made efforts to preserve the September 9 ceasefire agreement, while repeatedly urging Washington to live up to its obligations, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt turns out that Washington has failed to fulfill the key condition of the agreement to ease humanitarian situation for the residents of Aleppo\u201d said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. \u201cAnd now, apparently, having failed to honor these agreements that they themselves worked out, [the US] is trying to shift the blame.\u201d
\nThe JIC would have been located in Geneva, Switzerland, with the purpose to coordinate military cooperation and intelligence-sharing between Russia and the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS\/ISIL) in Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n
Washington has dragged its feet on setting up the JIC, however, with State Department spokesman John Kirby telling reporters on September 16 that its establishment was contingent on humanitarian aid reaching Aleppo, while the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, told lawmakers the US had \u201cno intention of having an intelligence-sharing agreement with the Russians.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended Moscow\u2019s participation in a program for disposing of plutonium from decommissioned nuclear warheads, citing \u201cthe radical change in the environment, a threat to strategic stability posed by the hostile actions of the US against Russia, and the inability of the US to deliver on the obligation to dispose of excessive weapons plutonium under international treaties.\u201d
\nThe White House called the decision \u201cdisappointing.\u201d
\n\u201cThis is not a decision we took lightly,\u201d State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told reporters Monday afternoon, claiming that Russia had not lived up to its obligations under the ceasefire agreement.<\/p>\n
Asked if the US fulfilled its own obligation to separate the so-called moderate opposition from terrorists, Trudeau replied, \u201cWe believe we did.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had detailed negotiations with the opposition, emphasizing the importance of \u2018demarbleizing\u2019 [sic] from Al-Nusra,\u201d Trudeau said, clarifying Washington\u2019s official stance that \u201cNusra is Al-Qaeda, they are a terrorist organization.\u201d<\/p>\n
RT\u2019s Gayane Chichakyan reminded Trudeau that several major rebel groups refused outright to abide by the ceasefire.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe expected good faith efforts, not only from rebel groups on the ground\u2026 but also Russia,\u201d Trudeau replied. \u201cIf attacked, opposition groups have the right to defend themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington has \u201csuspended\u201d bilateral contacts with Moscow over the Syrian crisis, the US State Department said. Russian Foreign Ministry said it was “disappointed” by the decision and accused the US of seeking to shift blame for its own failure in Syria. US officials had threatened for a week to withdraw from the Syrian peace process, after the latest ceasefire… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":187,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions\/187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}