David Cameron said the west was prepared to compromise with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to strike a deal to end the Syrian civil war. He insisted, however, that he and other world leaders were not being stubborn over demands that the Syrian leader, President Bashar al-Assad, step down at the end of the peace process.
The prime minister was speaking before his first face-to-face meeting with Putin for a year at the G20 summit of the world’s leading economies in Antalya, southern Turkey.With the need to crush Isis in Syria given a fresh urgency following the terror group’s claim that it was responsible for killing more than 130 people in Paris, Cameron and the US president, Barack Obama, are questioning Putin to see how they can reach a compromise about Syria that protects Russian interests in the region.
Cameron said: “The disagreement has been that we think Assad should go at once and Russia obviously has taken a different view and we have to find a settlement where Assad leaves and there is a government that brings the country together. But we must not allow the gap there is between us to be the altar on which the country of Syria is slaughtered. That is the challenge. That is going to take compromises.”
Interviewed on BBC Radio 4, the prime minister insisted: “We are not just being stubborn here. We are not saying Assad cannot be part of the government of Syria because we said it and we are sticking to our position. It is a statement of fact rather than a statement of preference. This man has barrel-bombed his own population and slaughtered so many of his own countrymen. It is for them rather than for us that he cannot play a long-term role in running the country”
Putin said on Monday morning, before the meeting with Cameron: “The recent tragic events in France show that we should join efforts in preventing terror. Unfortunately our bilateral relations are not of the best, but there is certain revival.”
The Iranians and the Russians have both said it is for the Syrian people to decide on their new leader in an election, while the Americans, French, British and Saudis argue that Assad can only stay on as part of the government on an interim basis and probably for no more than 18 months.
In talks between the world powers held at the weekend in Vienna, it was agreed that the various parties in Syria need to start talks early next year, leading to elections in 18 months.
The Jordanians have been asked to decide which groups will be designated as terrorists and therefore not permitted to join the talks. No agreement about the long-term future of Assad was reached at Vienna, and there is scepticism that Putin is really willing to abandon the Syrian president after four years. TheRussians have only recently started an air bombing campaign to protect Assad from military advances by rebel groups.
The minimum agreement between the west and Putin may be over how to combine to attack Isis, rather than reaching a deal on Assad.
Cameron said the UK had been preparing for the kind of attacks seen in Paris. But he added that the security services would be going back to the drawing board to check they were prepared for the scale of the attacks that occurred in France. He added that if British interests were at stake then “we will act and take immediate action in Syria and report to parliament afterwards”.
Cameron also warned that even if the Syrian conflict was resolved, the threat of extremism remained across the world, including in Africa.
The British hope that the tragic downing of the Russian jet over the Sinai last month, which killed more than 200 Russian civilians, will persuade Putin to see that he and the west have a mutual interest in pushing Isis out of Northern Syria, and bringing in a newly elected government. Relations between Putin and the west have suffered over Russian support for rebels in eastern Ukraine.
But Cameron has expressed such optimism before only to be disappointed and admitted “the gap between us, it is difficult. We have some profound disagreements.”
He said: “But I will start the conversation with the thing that we agree about, which is that Isis and this radical Islamic extremism is just as much a threat, potentially more of a threat, to Russia as it is to Europe.” He added Putin said as much at the G20 dinner on Sunday night.
Cameron also said he still supported Britain extending airstrikes against Isis from Iraq to Syria. He said: “Isis does not recognise the border between Syria and Iraq and neither should we. I need to build the argument. I need to convince more people. We won’t hold that vote unless we can see parliament will endorse that action because to fail on this would be damaging not to the government but to the country and its reputation in the world. But in the end parliament must decide.”
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