US protecting Syria jihadist group - Russia's Foreign Minister

 

The US is trying to spare a jihadist group in its attempts to unseat Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov has told the BBC. Lavrov said the US had broken its promise to separate the powerful Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly known as al-Nusra Front) and other extremist groups from more moderate rebels. Jabhat Fateh al-Sham is linked to al-Qaeda.

A US state department spokesman said the Russian allegations were "absurd". Mark Toner told journalists that the US had not targeted al-Nusra for months because they had become "intermingled" with other groups and civilians; and he accused the Russians of forcing moderate elements within the Syrian opposition into the hands of extremists with their attacks.
Mr Lavrov was speaking to Stephen Sackur on BBC World News TV on the first anniversary of the beginning of the Russian air campaign in Syria. "They [the US] pledged solemnly to take as a priority an obligation to separate the opposition from Nusra. They still, in spite of many repeated promises and commitments... are not able or not willing to do this and we have more and more reasons to believe that from the very beginning the plan was to spare Nusra and to keep it just in case for Plan B or stage two when it would be time to change the regime." he said.
Mr Lavrov says that it is US policy towards Syria that is floundering, insisting that American officials have lost control of both events and of themselves. There is an element of truth here - at least in policy terms. The US has no real alternative to Secretary of State John Kerry's efforts to deal with the Russians.
Mr Lavrov's central message - that Washington has refused to press its allies to separate themselves from the Islamists of al-Nusra ignores the fact that it is Russia's air campaign that is pushing rebel groups into al-Nusra's arms. Mr Lavrov's contention that the US is preserving al-Nusra, hoping eventually to use it to change the regime, will prompt gasps of condemnation in Washington. But Mr Lavrov implicitly highlights a perennial difficulty for Washington - its search for a moderate opposition of sufficient critical mass to influence the battlefield.