Lavrov and Kerry are dragging the kids to the table once again.
According to former CIA officer Ray McGovern it’s good news that Russia and the US are cooperating on finding a solution to the Syrian crisis, but the bad news is that some US allies in the region seem to be out of its control, he told RT.
“The good news is that presidents Putin and Obama have given very clear directions to their foreign secretary and secretary of state to get their act together and exert joint US-Russian influence on the scenario in Syria,” said McGovern.
He cited as an example an agreement reached between Russia and the US in 2014 on the elimination of Syrian chemical weapons. This, as Lavrov said at a media conference in Munich, was one of the major achievements of the last year - the destruction of all those chemical weapons and the prevention of an overt war against Syria by the US. “So, when they get clear directions they could do these things,” McGovern said.
“When Putin told Obama: “We don’t really think you are doing a very good job in Syria, we are going to send our own planes to finish ISIS off, “what Obama did to his credit was saying: “Ok, let’s get our foreign secretary and the secretary of state together to de-conflict things so we don’t run into each other,” McGovern continued.
Considering the current situation “where it has gone beyond deconfliction to cooperation” as a positive signal, McGovern argues that “the bad news is that the US does not control Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or even Turkey the way the US controls Western or Eastern Europe”.
“What the US needs to do is, as we say in America, ‘talk turkey‘ to Turkey and tell them to knock it off, don’t even think about invading Syria. And they need to ‘talk turkey’ to Saudi Arabia as well”, he added.
McGovern said that "it is going to take some guts, because there is a hundred billion in terms of arm sales pending from the US to Saudi Arabia. Obama is going to have to step up to the arms merchants and make it happen.”
