Washington and Moscow failed Monday to agree on a deal to stem Syria’s violence during talks between U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian leader Vladimir Putin in China.
While speaking of “productive” talks and “some alignment” on Syria, the two powers failed to produce an expected deal to ease the violence in the war-torn country, where more than 290,000 people have been killed and more than half the population displaced since March 2011.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday in China that he was working with Russia and the U.S. to have northern Syria declared a no-fly zone, a proposal that has failed to get off the ground in the past.
Hopes had been raised that a U.S.-Russian deal would be announced over the weekend, but U.S. officials said it floundered after Russia backtracked.
Despite the failure, Obama said Monday that a meeting with Putin on Syria had included “productive conversations about what a real cessation of hostilities would look like.”
Putin meanwhile said he felt there was “some alignment of positions and an understanding of what we could do to de-escalate the situation in Syria.”
He said a deal with Washington could be firmed up in the “coming days” but refused to give concrete details, saying that U.S. and Russian officials are still “working out some of our preliminary agreements.”
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov are expected to continue the talks in the coming days.
Earlier in the day, a senior U.S. State Department official said a fresh round of crisis talks between Kerry and Lavrov on the margins of the G20 summit had ended without agreement.
U.S. officials had hoped to build pressure on Moscow over its support for Assad’s government during the Hangzhou summit and upcoming U.N. General Assembly.
Washington has repeatedly said that Assad must step down in order for a lasting peace deal.
Turning up the heat in recent weeks, the White House has gone as far as to suggest Moscow is complicit in war crimes.
“You have the Assad regime which has been killing its own citizens with impunity, supported by the Russians and the Iranians,” Obama said on Sunday.
The failure to reach a deal is likely to heap pressure on Obama over his handling of the war in Syria.
Obama came to office vowing not to repeat the mistakes of his predecessor George W. Bush, who launched disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But as he prepares to leave office, critics say Obama’s failure to intervene in Syria has had similarly bloody results, allowing the conflict to fester for years.
