US says continues cooperation with Russia on Syria to pressure Damascus

WASHINGTON, June 3. /TASS/. The United States continues cooperating with Russia on the conflict in Syria so that Moscow could try to exert pressure on Damascus, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf has told reporters. "We will work with the Russians to see if they can pressure the regime [of Syrian President Bashar Assad] to get back to the negotiating table in a serious way. They were able to help pressure to get them there previously. Obviously, those rounds did not end with what we needed to see. The spokeswoman noted that the talks with the Russian side on this issue have been "productive." "Well, we have recently had productive conversations with the Russians at various levels on the urgency to get to a genuine and sustainable political transition," Harf said. Russian president’s special envoy for the Middle East and Africa and Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov earlier told reporters that Washington has understood that there is no alternative to the current Syrian leadership. "In my opinion, our US partners have understood one thing: there is no alternative to Bashar Assad and the current government. If anything happens to them, then power and the territory of Syria will be fully seized by terrorists and extremists, the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra," Bogdanov said. "In general, this will be the second Somalia and the second Libya and this is a very dangerous scenario that is absolutely not in the interests of the Syrian people. This destabilizes the situation in the region as a whole," he stressed. Read more