© REUTERS/Alexander Nemenov/PoolRussian President Vladimir Putin walks past an honour guard as he attends a meeting of the State Council at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia December 27, 2017.
Late this month Russia will host and broker a new round of Syrian peace talks in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi. The Sochi talks will be an extension of talks that had earlier taken place in Astana, Kazakhstan, under the joint sponsorship of Russia, Turkey, and Iran. If there is to be any diplomatic momentum in the weeks ahead regarding the Syrian conflict, that momentum most likely will be found in Sochi and Russia. Although some Syrian opposition elements
are still hoping the United States will snatch diplomatic leadership on the issue away from Moscow, other relevant players regard Sochi as the place to be rather than a place to avoid. This evidently
includes Saudi Arabia, a principal bankroller of the Syrian opposition, and United Nations special envoy Staffan de Mistura, who has had his own intermittent Syrian negotiations in Geneva. Russian officials describe their efforts as complementing rather than replacing the U.N. talks in Geneva, and they
have expressed hope there will be another Geneva round before the Sochi meeting.
Comment: Sez who? The interests of the US are completely irrelevant to peace negotiations in the Middle East and it's fairly obtuse to assume Russia couldn't do a better job without the US injecting its "interests" into the negotiation. It really comes down to who is best for the job, and given that the US is completely in bed with Israel, there is simply no way they could be considered impartial. Moscow, it would seem, really is the best choice, without US 'cooperation'.
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