Putin's Syria gambit puts US on back foot at UN

NEW YORK — Russia's President Vladimir Putin launched a new coalition to battle the Daesh terror group in Syria on Sunday, as he prepared to confront US rival Barack Obama at the United Nations.

The dramatic diplomatic gambit underlined how Russia has seized the initiative on Syria, as US Secretary of State John Kerry met his counterpart Sergei Lavrov to express his concerns.

Putin and Obama are to make duelling speeches on Monday before the United Nations General Assembly in New York and will come face-to-face in a private meeting at a time of high drama.

But even as the diplomatic playing pieces are coming into place, the facts on the ground are shifting, with Iraq confirming that it is to share intelligence with Russia, Iran and Syria.

The United States has built its own coalition of mainly Sunni Arab and Western countries to fight Daesh in Iraq and Syria, but Russia is taking another course.

As Kerry began talks with Lavrov on the sidelines of the UN meeting, he urged Russia not to go it alone. 

"I think the critical thing is that all of the efforts need to be coordinated. This is not yet coordinated," he said. 

"I think we have concerns about how we are going to go forward. That is precisely what we are meeting on to talk about now." 

Washington has demanded that Syrian strongman Bashar Assad step down, but Putin's rival alliance with Shiite-led states will instead shore up the beleaguered government in Damascus.

Mocked US efforts 

Western powers say Assad's military is responsible for the vast majority of the 240,000 deaths in the four-year war, but Putin said there is only "one legitimate conventional army" in Syria.

"We have proposed to cooperate with the countries in the region. We are trying to establish some kind of coordinated framework," Putin said in an interview with CBS News "60 Minutes".

"We would welcome a common platform for collective action against the terrorists," he said, in excerpts released Sunday.

Stressing the need to work with Assad to defeat the jihadist threat, Putin mocked the United States' $500-million effort to train Syrian anti-Daesh fighters. 

"As few as 4 or 5 people actually carry weapons, the rest of them have deserted with the American weapons to join ISIS [Daesh]," he said.

The Pentagon has confirmed that one group of US-trained rebels surrendered some of their equipment to an Al Qaeda linked militia, apparently in return for safe passage.

Washington and its allies counter that Assad triggered the civil war that has given jihadist factions room to grow, and continues to make a political settlement impossible.

US ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power told ABC News: "We haven't seen a dictator like him in a very long time.

"The other challenge is he hasn't been at all effective fighting ISIL [Daesh]. In fact, the presence of Assad has attracted foreign terrorist fighters," she argued. 

Intense bloodshed 

Washington and its allies refuse to put boots on the ground in Syria, despite the extraordinary chaos after four years of intense bloodshed, but Russia is ramping up its presence.

Moscow already has a powerful military detachment on a Syrian airbase in government-held territory, equipped with warplanes and tanks, and will now work more closely with neighbouring Iraq.

Saad Al Hadithi, a spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi's office, told AFP that officers from Russia, Iran, Syria and Iraq would work together in Baghdad.

"It's a committee coordinating between the four countries, with representatives of each country, in the field of military intelligence," he said.

Iraq will continue to work with the US-led anti-Daesh coalition, but the new Russian presence in the capital captured by US forces in 2003 and occupied for a decade sends a powerful signal. 

Obama and Kerry are hoping to use the week of the UN General Assembly to strengthen the resolve of their own coalition and build momentum for the fight against jihadist violence.

The US president will address the crisis in his own address and hold a parallel summit on violent extremism, while Kerry and US allies rally support for the anti-Daesh battle.

But all eyes will now be on Obama's face-off with Putin, who suggested that Washington's support for "moderate" Sunni rebels in Syria was illegal and a source of much of the violence. 

Separately, the leader of the fourth arm of Putin's anti-Daesh coalition, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, said Tehran would be open to discuss "a new plan of action" on Syria's future.

Bu only after Daesh is defeated.