{Tillerson says ‘Assad family reign coming to end’ as he heads to Moscow after talks with G7 ministers on Syrian war.}<\/p>\n
The US secretary of state has said he hopes Russia will abandon its support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad because actions such as last week’s chemical attack have stripped him of all legitimacy.<\/p>\n
Rex Tillerson made the remarks at the conclusion on Tuesday in Italy of a meeting of foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) and “like-minded” countries.<\/p>\n
“It is clear to us the reign of the Assad family is coming to an end,” he said shortly before leaving the Tuscan city of Lucca for Moscow.<\/p>\n
“We hope that the Russian government concludes that they have aligned themselves with an unreliable partner in Bashar al-Assad.”<\/p>\n
A British proposal to slap extra sanctions on Syrian and Russian military officials, however, failed to win the support of the G7, Angelino Alfano, Italy’s foreign minister, said.<\/p>\n
Alfano, who chaired Tuesday’s talks, said: “At this time there is no consensus for further new sanctions as an effective tool for reaching the objective that we have set ourselves.”<\/p>\n
He also said that Russia should not be “pushed into a corner” over Syria, but that it should put pressure on Assad to stop the use of chemical weapons, and should join the international push for peace in Syria.<\/p>\n
The Syrian government has denied it was behind the April 4 attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun.<\/p>\n
Russia has also rejected the accusations that Assad used chemical arms against his own people while stating that it will not cut its ties with him.<\/p>\n
Assad has been locked in a six-year-old civil war that has devastated Syria and displaced half its population.<\/p>\n
“Returning to pseudo-attempts to resolve the crisis by repeating mantras that Assad must step down cannot help sort things out,” Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Monday.<\/p>\n
The same day, Boris Johnson, UK’s foreign minister, praised last week’s US missile strike on a Syrian airbase as a “game changer”, and said that support for Assad “was toxifying the reputation of Russia” and suggested that sanctions could be imposed on Russia if it refused to change course.<\/p>\n
However, Lina Khatib, head of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, says it is questionable whether sanctions would have any effect on Syria.<\/p>\n
“We know that sanctions alone will not make much of a difference,” she said, speaking to Al Jazeera from London on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“We have seen sanctions against Ukraine, and they didn’t achieve much. So, the only way forward is a dialogue with Russia.<\/p>\n
“Rex Tillerson’s visit to Russia is not going to be a game changer. It is a start but we know that after this visit, Russia is not going to declare it has severed its ties with the Assad regime. What will make a difference is if Russia sees that there is the political will on part of the United States.”<\/p>\n
Khatib said if the US took this opportunity to show that regime change or political transition was a serious priority and that the administration was willing to engage in political action in order to make it happen, it would cause Western countries to rally behind the US.<\/p>\n
“This will be what will bring Russia to the negotiating table as [the Russians] have so far only paid lip service to political change,” she said.<\/p>\n
Source:Al Jazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Tillerson says ‘Assad family reign coming to end’ as he heads to Moscow after talks with G7 ministers on Syrian war.} The US secretary of state has said he hopes Russia will abandon its support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad because actions such as last week’s chemical attack have stripped him of all legitimacy. Rex […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[160],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-33848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-theophile-niyitegeka"],"bylines":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"contributors":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33848\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33848"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=33848"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=33848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}