The U.S. Department of Defense has tweeted this image of U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and his wife arriving in Turkey this morning for a visit to troops and their families.
From our news desk:
Saudi Arabia Announces 34-State Military Coalition To Fight Terrorism
Saudi Arabia on December 15 announced the formation of a 34-member Islamic military alliance to combat terrorism.
"The countries here mentioned have decided on the formation of a military alliance led by Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism, with a joint operations center based in Riyadh to coordinate and support military operations," a joint statement published by the state news agency SPA said.
The listed alliance members include Arab countries such Egypt, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, together with Islamic countries Turkey, Malaysia, and Pakistan. Other Gulf Arab and African states were also mentioned in the list.
"The appropriate arrangements shall be developed for coordination with friendly peace-loving nations and international bodies for the sake of supporting international efforts to combat terrorism and to save international peace and security," the statement said.
The announcement cited "a duty to protect the Islamic nation from the evils of all terrorist groups and organizations whatever their sect and name which wreak death and corruption on Earth and aim to terrorize the innocent."
Sunni Saudi Arabia’s regional rival, Shi'ite Muslim Iran, was not listed as a member of the new alliance. The two countries have been locked in proxy conflicts from Syria to Yemen.
The United States has called on Gulf Arab states to step up their efforts to fight Islamic State (IS) militants that control areas of Iraq and Syria.
U.S. President Barack Obama on December 14 said he has tasked Defense Secretary Ash Carter with traveling to the Middle East to secure greater military contributions from other countries in the U.S.-led coalition that is fighting IS forces.
Saudi Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman told reporters in a rare press conference on December 15 that the newly announced campaign would "coordinate" counterterrorism efforts in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt, and Afghanistan, though he provided few concrete details.
"We will fight every terrorist organization, not only the Islamic State," bin Salman said at the press conference, which was broadcast by Saudi television.
He added that each member country will participate in the alliance according to its capabilities.
"There will be international coordination with major powers and international organizations...in terms of operations in Syria and Iraq. We can't undertake these operations without coordinating with legitimacy in this place and the international community," bin Salman said.
IS militants have vowed to overthrow the Gulf Arab monarchies and have attacked Shi'ite Muslim mosques and security personnel in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Russia's FSB has estimated that around 3,000 Russians are fighting alongside the IS group, BBC Russian reports.
The head of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has said that it has killed 20 out of 26 militant leaders in the North Caucasus who had pledged allegiance to the IS group.
Speaking at the opening of a meeting of the National Security Committee this morning, Alexander Bortnikov said that the "forecasted deterioration of the situation since the start of the Russian air force campaign against terrorists in Syria confirms the threats emanating from IS and other international terrorist groups. Militants are trying to infiltrate us from the 'hot spots'."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has refused to comment on whether Russia is supplying weapons to the Free Syrian Army, Kommersant reports.
"I have nothing to add to what has been said," Peskov was quoted as saying.
The Free Syrian Army denied yesterday that they had received any support from Russia, saying that Russian aircraft had continued to bomb their positions.
Pro-Kremlin news website RIA Novosti has reported that U.S. Secretary of State thanked his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Russian this morning after the two had greeted each other.
RIA notes that 150 journalists had covered the meeting, and that "such hype is typical of bilateral contacts between Russian and American foreign ministers and usually ends with clashes and arguments over the best position for taking photographs."
Kerry and Lavrov are discussing the crisis in Syria.
Ahead of the meeting, Russia stepped up its criticism of the United States' position on Syria and its role in the fight against the IS group.
As talks between Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his U.S. counterpart John Kerry got underway this morning, Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova took to Facebook to comment on the U.S.-led campaign against IS in Iraq and Syria.
"Obama talked about the need to carry out 'surgical strikes' on IS," Zakharova wrote.
"The main thing is that in Washington's understanding this does not turn out to be plastic surgery, which rather than solving the problem just changes its form."
U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has visited the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey about 100 miles from the Syrian border this morning, the Washington Post reports.
Carter is at the beginning of a Middle Eastern tour to see the evolving U.S.-led campaign against IS and comes a day after President Obama convened a meeting of top national security professionals at the Pentagon to discuss plans for fighting IS.
Saudi Arabia has announced the formation of a 34-state Islamic military coalition to combat terrorism, according to a joint statement published on state news agency SPA.
"The countries here mentioned have decided on the formation of a military alliance led by Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism, with a joint operations center based in Riyadh to coordinate and support military operations," the statement said.
The statement noted a list of Arab countries including Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Islamic countries including Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia and African states.
From our news desk:
Kerry Begins Talks In Moscow On Syria, Ukraine
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has begun meetings in Moscow expected to touch on efforts for a political transition to end Syria's civil war and implementation of a peace deal in eastern Ukraine.
Kerry has started talks with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and will meet with President Vladimir Putin later on December 15.
The visit by the top U.S. diplomat comes ahead of a planned third round of Syria talks between world powers on December 18 in New York.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued late on December 14 that Kerry and Lavrov spoke by phone earlier in the day and agreed on the need for specific preconditions to be met before any new meeting, casting doubt on the timing of the planned New York meeting.
U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters in Washington the same day, however, that Kerry was traveling to Moscow "with the expectation that there are no preconditions to having this meeting."
The United States and its allies insist that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad cannot stay in power as part of a political resolution to the nearly 5-year-old civil war in Syria, where government forces are fighting both Islamic State (IS) militants and moderate opposition groups -- some backed by the U.S.-led coalition.
Russia rejects that position, saying it should be up to the Syrian people to choose their leader and that Assad's army is the force most capable of defeating IS fighters that control areas of Syria and Iraq.
At the start of his meeting with Lavrov in Moscow, Kerry said Washington and Moscow agree that IS "is a threat to everybody, to every country. They are the worst of terrorists. They attack culture and history and all decency."
Celeste Wallander, senior director for Russia and Central Asia on U.S. President Barack Obama’s National Security Council, told RFE/RL ahead of Kerry's talks with Putin that while the two sides' positions on Assad may not have "come closer," Washington sees the possibility of Russia's position "evolving such that we could agree."
"It's clear that there could be an agreement on a transition that meets U.S. and coalition requirements that Assad not be part of Syria's leadership, and those are the discussions that are under intensive focus right now," Wallander said in a December 11 interview.
A senior State Department official told reporters that "we don't have a full meeting of the minds yet" concerning Assad's future.
"We will talk about some of the details of a transition...in the hopes of narrowing the differences between us," Reuters quoted the unidentified official as saying on December 14.
The Associated Press cited an unidentified U.S. diplomat in Paris as saying that Russian and U.S. diplomats held a December 11 meeting primarily aimed at clearing up Russian "grievances" ahead of Kerry's meeting with Putin.
A meeting in Saudi Arabia last week agreed to unite several Syrian opposition groups, excluding IS militants, to negotiate with Assad's government in peace talks.
While Kerry said "kinks" still needed to be worked out on the plan to unite the Syrian opposition groups, the Kremlin rejected the outcome of the Riyadh meeting, saying it did not have the right to speak on behalf of the entire Syrian opposition.
Kerry arrived in Moscow from Paris, where he met with counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan to prepare for his talks with Putin and Lavrov.
Kerry and Putin are also set to discuss the implementation of the Minsk cease-fire accords, signed in February in the Belarusian capital, to halt violence between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine that the UN says has killed more than 9,000 people since April 2014.
"We're going to talk very extensively and very carefully about what's needed to implement the Minsk agreements," Wallander told RFE/RL last week.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in Washington on December 14 that Kerry will also encourage continued efforts by Russia to ease tensions with Turkey after Ankara shot down a Russian military plane near the Syrian border on November 24.
Kerry's trip is his second to Russia this year. He and Putin met in May in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. But it is the first since Russia launched a bombing campaign targeting armed groups fighting Assad in what Moscow has framed as a counterterrorist campaign.
The United States and its allies have accused Russia of bombing the moderate Syrian opposition and using its military intervention to prop up Assad rather than targeting IS positions -- criticism that Russia has rejected.
Obama has seen Putin briefly twice -- at international summits in Turkey and France -- since Russia began its air campaign in Syria in late September.