Russia, US to attend Syria peace talks in October

Russia and the United States are expected to take part in Syria peace talks in October, along with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, Russia's deputy foreign minister said Monday.

A meeting of an international contact group of the "most influential outside players" will "be pushed forward to October after the UN General Assembly," deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov said, quoted by RIA Novosti news agency.

"We have named the participants: Russia, the US, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt," Bogdanov said, adding that others could also be invited.

Russia wants the talks to happen "as quickly as possible," he added.

Bogdanov said the makeup of the contact group had not yet been decided but could include the countries' foreign ministers.

"The level hasn't been decided yet. I think it will be working at multiple levels: experts, deputy ministers and ministers if necessary."

He said the group would meet after the formation of four working groups on Syria in Geneva and would work together with the UN's envoy on Syria, Staffan de Mistura.

"Naturally, here it is very important to work in conjunction with the United Nations, with de Mistura," he said.

De Mistura has said he hoped the working groups, which will involve Syrians, could lay the ground for the country's warring factions to find a political solution to the conflict.

Vladimir Putin has sent troops and aircraft to war-torn Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Putin is calling for a new coalition to fight the Islamic State extremists who have seized swathes of Syria and Iraq that would include Russian forces and Assad's regime.

Putin's UN showdown with Obama over Syria

Putin and Obama are due to make competing speeches before the UN General Assembly in New York, and will come face-to-face for their first official meeting in over two years at a time of high tension.

In the runup to the showdown, Putin - isolated by the West over the crisis in Ukraine - has dramatically thrust himself back into the spotlight with a lightning push on the 4.5-year conflict in Syria.

Moscow has put Washington on the back foot by dispatching troops and aircraft to the war-torn country and pushing reluctant world leaders to admit its long-standing ally Bashar al-Assad could cling to power.

The Kremlin strongman called in an interview ahead of the UN summit for "a common platform for collective action" against Islamic State jihadists that would supercede a US-led coalition and involve Assad's forces.

On the ground, Russia seems to have already started putting the pieces together by agreeing with Iraq, Syria and Iran that their officers will work together in Baghdad to share intelligence on IS. 

'Long way to go' 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that despite the sharp disagreements, he saw that Moscow and Washington shared a "desire to work together" on Syria after a meeting with his American counterpart John Kerry on Sunday.

But the US has expressed deep concern over Russia's manoeuvring in Syria and insists Obama will not let Putin off the hook over Ukraine after he shattered ties with the West by seizing the Crimea peninsula and allegedly fueling a separatist conflict.  

"We're just at the beginning of trying to understand what the Russians' intentions are in Syria, in Iraq, and to try to see if there are mutually beneficial ways forward here," a senior State Department official said.

"We've got a long way to go in that conversation."

Washington has demanded that Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad step down, but Putin's rival alliance with Shiite-led states will instead shore up the beleaguered government in Damascus.

Western powers say Assad's military is responsible for the vast majority of the 240,000 deaths in the war, but with their response to IS in disarray, they have let the Syrian president's backers present him as the only option.

"I think today everyone has accepted that President Assad must remain so that we can combat the terrorists," Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, another key ally of Assad, told CNN on Sunday.