Obama says Assad must go, pushes campaign against IS

By Carole Landry

US President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad must go if the Islamic State (IS) is to be defeated, as he rallied world leaders to revitalise the coalition campaign against the hardline armed group.

A day after clashing with Russian President Vladimir Putin over how to handle the crisis in Syria, Obama hosted a counter-terrorism summit at the United Nations to take stock of the one-year air war against IS fighters in Iraq and Syria.

"In Syria ... defeating ISIL requires, I believe, a new leader," Obama told the gathering, held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

Russia snubbed the meeting of some 100 leaders, sending a low-level diplomat after Putin stole the limelight with his UN speech calling for a broad coalition to fight IS that would include Syria's army.

Assad's fate is the key bone of contention between Washington and Syria's Russian and Iranian allies amid intense diplomacy over the way forward to end the four-year war that has killed more than 240,000.

At the summit, Obama said the United States was ready to work with Russia and Iran to "find a political mechanism in which it is possible to begin a transition process".

The United States has long insisted that Assad must leave power but Obama did not specify whether the Syrian leader could take part in a transition in an interim role.

Hinting at a possible compromise, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington could cooperate on Syria if Russia and Iran persuade Assad to stop using barrel bombs against civilians.

"They are both in a position, in exchange perhaps for something that we might do, they might decide to keep Assad from dropping barrel bombs," Kerry said in an interview with MSNBC.

Western diplomats maintain that Assad has killed far more civilians by using barrel bombs dropped from helicopters than IS in its brutal advance in Syria. 

All talk, no action

Taking a swipe at Russia, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius accused Moscow of displaying bravado on the Syria crisis that had yet to be backed up with action against the IS group.

"You have to look at who is doing what. The international community is striking Daesh. France is striking Daesh. The Russians, for the time being, are not at all," Fabius told a news conference, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

The counter-terrorism summit takes place after Obama vowed to crush IS in his UN speech a year ago and called on countries to join the United States in the campaign.

Taking stock one year on, Obama said IS had lost a third of the "populated areas" it controlled in Iraq and had been "cut off" from almost all of Turkey's border region.

But he added that military action alone would not succeed unless efforts were made to address the conditions that allow the group's ideology to thrive.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi called for international aid to equip his troops fighting IS, who triggered alarm after seizing the city of Mosul in June last year.

Since then, IS fighters have captured territory in Syria and Iraq and its affiliates have gained a foothold in Libya, Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, with alliances as far afield as Nigeria, with Boko Haram.

30,000 foreign fighters

On Tuesday, Nigeria, Malaysia and Tunisia joined the coalition that now comprises more than 60 countries. 

Iran was not invited to the summit even though it is playing a major role in the fight against IS, providing military advisers, weapons and trainers.

The US-led coalition wants to step up measures to prevent foreign fighters from joining the IS battlefield after a report showed nearly 30,000 had traveled to Iraq and Syria since 2011.

It has carried out more than 7,200 air raids over the past year, with France sending its warplanes this week to pound IS targets in Syria.

Aside from the aerial bombardment of IS targets, the Pentagon has set up a $500mn programme to train and equip "moderate" Syrian rebels.

But that tactic has turned into a fiasco after the Pentagon said only a few dozen of fighters had been trained and that some of those had handed over their weapons to al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria.

Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin blasted the US-led summit as "disrespectful" toward the United Nations, saying it "seriously undermines UN efforts in this direction".

On Wednesday, Russia is to host a special UN Security Council meeting on the same issue - an event bound to highlight sharp differences in approach.