Trump and Putin Agree to Seek Syria Cease-Fire
Source: New York Times
By PETER BAKER and NEIL MacFARQUHAR
WASHINGTON — President Trump reopened direct communications with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Tuesday and sought to reignite what he hoped would be a special relationship by agreeing to work together to broker a cease-fire in war-torn Syria.
In their first telephone conversation since the United States launched a cruise missile strike on Syria’s Moscow-backed military to retaliate for a chemical weapons attack on civilians, Mr. Trump agreed to send a representative to Russian-brokered cease-fire talks that start on Wednesday in Astana, Kazakhstan. He and Mr. Putin also discussed meeting each other in Germany in July.
But American and Russian officials offered divergent accounts of their interest in establishing safe zones in Syria to protect civilians suffering from a relentless, six-year civil war. A White House statement said the two leaders had discussed such zones “to achieve lasting peace for humanitarian and many other reasons.” The Kremlin statement made no mention of safe zones, and Mr. Putin’s spokesman said they had not been discussed in detail.
Still, at the talks in Astana, Mr. Putin’s envoys plan to propose that Russia, Iran and Turkey act as buffer forces separating government and rebel forces in some areas of Syria. The government of President Bashar al-Assad is skeptical of the plan, seeing it as the first step toward a partition of the country, according to diplomats and analysts.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/world/europe/trump-putin-syria.html?emc=edit_th_20170503&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284&_r=0
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