Putin has just said to U.S.Secretary of State Kerry, according to RIA:
"Today you have had extensive talks with Russia's Foreign Ministry. Minister Lavrov has reported to me in detail about your proposals and about several questions that need further consideration. I am very pleased to meet with you and talk."
Saudi-Led Anti-Terror Alliance Hasn't Ruled Out Ground Troops
Saudi Arabia's Islamic anti-terror alliance will share information and train, equip and provide forces if necessary for the fight against the IS group, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said at a briefing in Paris on Tuesday, Reuters reports.
"Nothing is off the table," al-Jubeir said when asked whether the initiative could include ground troops.
Pro-Kremlin news site RIA Novosti is quoting U.S. Secretary of State Kerry as saying that the Vienna talks on Syria were a good start and opened a whole range of possibilities, and that together, Russia and the United States could achieve a great deal.
Cairo-based Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's leading seat of learning, has praised the formation of a 34-nation alliance against terrorism in the Islamic world and called on all Muslim countries to join the Saudi-led military coalition. AFP reports.
Al-Azhar said that the formation of the alliance was "historic", and said it hoped it would defeat the "evils of terrorism".
The U.S. Department of Defense has tweeted these images of Secretary of Defense Carter's visit today to U.S. and coalition airmen at Turkey's Incirlik air base today.
Turkey's state-run news agency says police have detained a Syrian Islamic State militant suspected of planning a suicide attack against the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul, AP reports. The consulate was closed last week over an unspecified threat.
Anadolu Agency said the man was detained today in Kahramanmaras, a province close to the border with Syria. It didn't cite a source for the report.
From our news desk:
In Moscow, Kerry Calls For 'Common Ground' On Syria, Ukraine
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has begun talks in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the wars in Syria and Ukraine.
At the start of the December 15 meeting, Kerry told Putin that the United States appreciates "the seriousness of your commitment in time and thought into these issues."
Kerry said the talks were a "strong beginning on opening up possibilities" for a diplomatic settlement in Syria.
Earlier on December 15, Kerry told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that he was looking for "common ground" in talks with Russia's leadership and the implementation of a peace deal in eastern Ukraine.
At the start of his three-hour meeting with Lavrov, Kerry said "the world benefits when powerful nations with a long history with each other have the ability to be able to find common ground."
The top U.S. diplomat also said Washington and Moscow agree that the militant group Islamic State (IS), which controls swaths of Syrian and Iraqi territory, is "a threat to everybody, to every country. They are the worst of terrorists. They attack culture and history and all decency."
Lavrov also expressed "hope that [Kerry's] visit will be fruitful." He stressed that IS is also active in Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen.
Kerry is scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin later on December 15.
The meetings come ahead of a planned third round of Syria talks between world powers in New York on December 18, but it is unclear whether that gathering will go ahead if differences over perceived "preconditions" are not patched up.
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.
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 AP news agency quoted 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.
Ahead of his talks with Putin, Kerry met with veteran Russian activist Lyudmila Alekseyeva in Moscow, amid accusations that the Russian authorities have further clamped down on freedoms and rights.
"He asked what is happening in Russia and what effect the law on non-governmental organisations has had on society," the 88-year-old head of the Moscow Helsinki Group said.
She told the U.S. top diplomat that the controversial law aimed to "destroy the nascent civil society."
France Uses SCALP Cruise Missiles Against IS For First Time
The French air force used its first cruise missiles against IS group targets in the Al Qaim area of western Iraq today, the defense ministry said, according to AFP. Al Qaim is a civilian area that also serves as a "training center and logistical depot," the ministry explained.
"Launched from the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, the raid was made up of a dozen fighter planes equipped with cruise missiles and bombs," the French ministry said in a statement.
AFP said that France used SCALP cruise missiles, which the French defense ministry said were useful in civilian areas because they had greater precision than normal bombs.
SCALP EG or Storm Shadow cruise missiles are used for pre-planned attacks on static targets whose positions are accurately known.
RIA Novosti has fresh news -- of sorts -- about U.S. Secretary of State Kerry's meeting this afternoon with Russia's Putin.
Putin told Kerry that he should sleep.
"Dear Mr. Secretary of State, we see how much effort you are putting into settling a number of pressing issues, we can't keep up with your travels. You need to get some sleep, I see," Putin is quoted as having said.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has posted a set of photographs of U.S. Secretary of State Kerry's meeting with Putin this afternoon to discuss the Syrian crisis.