Suddenly Russia consents to consider Assad’s ouster
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report May 04/16
Washington and Moscow have made dramatic progress over the last few days in marathon telephone talks between Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on ending the war in Syria. Russia agreed for the first time to discuss the possibility that Syrian President Bashar Assad will step down, and the conditions under which such a process will take place, according to debkafile’s intelligence sources.
The sources add that the Russians also agreed to begin to negotiate the future of senior Syrian military commanders who are carrying out the war against the rebels. The contacts that include the Saudis and the Jordanians have reached such an advanced stage that participants have started to prepare lists of Syrian commanders who will be removed or remain in their posts.
One of the clearest signs of the progress was the arrival of nearly all of the heads and commanders of the Syrian rebel organizations on Monday and Tuesday (May 2-3) for intensive talks at the US Central Command Forward-Jordan, a war room outside Amman staffed by officers from the US, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The gathering was arranged via a series of meetings held in Geneva over the last few days between the top diplomats of the US, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
Our sources report that US officials and senior officers in charge of the Obama administration’s strategy for the war in Syria presented the rebel leaders and commanders with a series of agreements already reached by Washington and Moscow on ways of ending the war. The main part of the agreement focused on the resignation of Assad and the departure of him and his family from the country-the Syrian opposition’s key demand for continuing the talks.
The rebel leaders were asked by the US officials and officers, who were accompanied by Saudi and Jordanian officials, to help facilitate implementation of the agreed measures and not to try to interfere with them, or in other words, to stop the fighting.
According to the information from our sources, the discussions in Jordan are continuing.
Washington’s current goal is achieve a ceasefire in all of Syria that will prevent an imminent attack by Russian, Iranian, Syrian and Hizballah forces on Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city.
Our military sources report that on Monday and Tuesday, by order of President Vladimir Putin, the Russian air force suddenly halted its airstrikes in the Aleppo area.
Thus, the Iranian, Syrian and Hizballah armies are preparing to launch their assault without the air support needed to capture the city. Even though the Syrian air force can operate in an uninhibited manner in the Aleppo area, it is not up to a large-scale and decisive attack.
No specific information is forthcoming for the Russian U-turn on Assad ousters in mid offensive for the recovery of Aleppo.
However Putin is prone to sudden zigzag in policies.