MIDDLE EAST IN PLAY Coalition of Adversaries

摘要

SYRIA: Russia, the US and the UN are set to meet in Geneva on Friday to prepare for talks that will try to end the Syrian civil war, which has metastasized into a full-blown regional conflict, dragging in Iraq, Turkey, Russia, the Gulf States and the West. If this week's gathering goes to plan US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, will meet next week. If progress is achieved on both tracks, the main parties in the Syrian conflict could gather in New York on Dec. 18. There have been many false starts to ending the Syrian war, which has raged since 2011, but the emergence of Islamic State has raised the prospect that the deeply divided powers could finally compromise for the sake of defeating the militant group, which has claimed responsibility for a string of attacks on Western, Turkish, Saudi and Russian targets. Meanwhile, the US and Russia are drafting a UN resolution aimed at choking off Islamic State's sources of finance, including oil smuggling (EC Dec.04'15).