I was in Vietnam, you knowKerry
Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a
lucky hat,conqueror of Cambodia, and current Secretary of State...
will use talks in Moscow on Tuesday to try to narrow differences with Russian leader Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...over the role of Syrian
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Leveler of Latakia...
in any political transition, a senior State Department official said on Monday.
He will also seek to prepare the ground for a third round of talks of world powers on Syria amid doubts over whether a meeting pencilled in for Friday in New York will go ahead.
Russia's foreign ministry said late on Monday that Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had agreed in a phone call on the need for specific preconditions to be met before any new meeting, throwing its timing into doubt.
Russia is one of Assad's staunchest allies and launched a campaign of air strikes to support his forces against snuffies on Sept. 30. It says only the Syrian people and not external powers should decide his political fate.
Speaking in Gay Paree before Kerry visits Moscow on Tuesday, the State Department official said Kerry would raise concerns about Russia's continued bombing of Syrian opposition forces instead of Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
myrmidons, an approach likely to anger Moscow.
Ahead of the talks, the Russian foreign ministry issued a statement criticising U.S. policy on Syria, complaining that Washington was not ready to fully cooperate in the struggle against Islamic State Lions of Islam and needed to rethink its policy of "dividing
Kerry's meeting with Putin follows a meeting last week in Riyadh which agreed to unite a number of opposition groups excluding Islamic State to negotiate with Damascus in Syrian peace talks.
While Kerry said there were still "kinks" that needed to be worked out on the plan to unite the opposition groups, the Kremlin rejected the outcome of the Riyadh meeting, saying it had no right to speak on behalf of the entire Syrian opposition.
Assad himself appeared to cast doubt on the very idea of peace talks last Friday, saying he would not negotiate with gangs which he said were backed by the United States and Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
.
The opposition groups said Assad should leave power at the start of a transitional period.