Obama Joins G-8 Allies Isolating Putin Over Assad Support
President Barack Obama and European allies moved to further isolate Russian president Vladimir Putin for supporting the regime in Syria even as the leaders sought a way to push both sides in that nation’s civil war into talks.
“Of course, our opinions do not coincide, but all of us have the intention to stop the violence in Syria,” Putin said yesterday after meeting with Obama on the sidelines of a summit in Northern Ireland.
“We do have differing perspectives,” Obama said, adding that “we share an interest in reducing the violence.”
In a public split rare at global summits, some western leaders gathered for the Group of Eight industrial nations publicly rebuked Putin for backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a bloody conflict that has killed more than 93,000 people. A British official, who asked not to be identified, called the event a clarifying moment in differences over Syria.
Even as the White House’s decision last week to send small arms to Syrian rebels deepened differences with Putin, Obama stressed “a careful, calibrated” approach to U.S. involvement in the conflict during an interview aired last night on PBS’s “The Charlie Rose Show.”
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-17/obama-meets-putin-amid-g-8-tension-over-syria.html
"Isolate" Putin at your our peril, indeed. This clusterfuck just seems to be getting started...
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