US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, have deliberated on mutual cooperation efforts to defeat ISIS and work together “to achieve more peace throughout the world including Syria”.
After an hour-long telephone conversation on Saturday, a White House statement termed it a “positive call” that marked “a significant start to improving the relationship between the United States and Russia that is in need of repair”.
“Both President Trump and President Putin are hopeful that after today’s call the two sides can move quickly to tackle terrorism and other important issues of mutual concern,” noted the brief White House statement.
Kremlin, in its statement on the highly-anticipated conversation, said the two leaders have agreed to establish “real coordination” to “crush ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria”.
Separately, Trump signed a memorandum, instructing the US Joint Chiefs of Staff to come up with a comprehensive plan in 30 days to defeat ISIS. “We’ve been talking about doing this for a long time, many years,” he remarked to the media at a signing ceremony.
The plan will recommend possible changes to US rules of engagement, public diplomacy, information operations and cyber strategies to isolate and delegitimize ISIS and its radical Islamist ideology.
It will also identify new coalition partners in the battle against ISIS and policies to empower the coalition partners. The plan will also deal with “mechanisms to cut off or seize ISIS’s financial support, including financial transfers, money laundering, oil revenue, human trafficking, sales of looted art and historical artifacts, and other revenue sources”.
The statements from Washington and Moscow made no reference to the issue of lifting US sanctions against Russia. Both Democrats and top Republican lawmakers are stoutly opposed to any such move.
Democrats have accused the Putin regime of hacking the Democratic National Committee’s emails and trying to influence the recent US presidential election in favour of Trump. Influential Republican Senators like John McCain have been wanting Moscow punished for its activities in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea.
In a day of hectic telephone diplomacy, Trump also held back-to-back conversations with four other world leaders — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.