– Turkey’s Erdogan urges united Muslim front against terror
– Obama says Assad must go; would veto bill toughening Syria refugee checks
– France says Russia open to cooperation as Moscow demands sovereignty be respected
– Syria army, rebels in talks over 15-day truce near capital
– Syria no breeding ground for ISIS, says Assad
– Iraqi-Kurdish leader says Paris attacks a ‘wake-up call’

Turkey’s Erdogan urges united Muslim front against terror
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for a united front by Muslim leaders to fight extremism after the Paris attacks, warning that otherwise jihadists will commit further atrocities. Erdogan warned that “calamities will happen again” if the rise of radical Islam is not halted in Europe. “We are at a crossroads in the fight against terrorism after the Paris attacks,” he said at the Atlantic Council’s Istanbul summit. Erdogan has long angrily dismissed suggestions that Ankara colluded with ISIS in the Syrian civil war. Turkey has supported rebel groups over four years of conflict in Syria in the hope they can help oust President Bashar al-Assad from power. [AFP, 11/19/2015]

Obama says Assad must go; would veto bill toughening Syria refugee checks
US President Barack Obama on Thursday said Syria’s civil war would not end unless President Bashar al-Assad leaves power, discounting suggestions that the leader could take part in future elections. “I do not foresee a situation in which we can end the civil war in Syria while Assad remains in power,” Obama said. Assad’s fate has become a key stumbling block to peace in Syria and a point of contention between the West and Assad’s backers in Moscow and Tehran. In related news, President Barack Obama would veto a Republican bill to toughen the screening process for Syrian refugees, the White House said Wednesday. The US House of Representatives could vote as early as Thursday on resolution 4038, which aims to block administration plans to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees in the coming year. [AFP, 11/19/2015]

France says Russia open to cooperation as Moscow demands sovereignty be respected
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Thursday that Russia was sincere in wanting to cooperate in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) in Syria. “There is an opening, so to speak, with the Russians. We think they are sincere and we must bring together all our forces,” Fabius said. Later on Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that Moscow is ready to work with the Western coalition fighting ISIS if its members respect Syria’s sovereignty. “We … are ready for practical cooperation with those countries which are part of the coalition and are ready to develop with them such forms of coordination that of course would respect Syria’s sovereignty and the prerogatives of the Syrian leadership,” Lavrov said in an interview. [AFP, 11/19/2015]

Syria army, rebels in talks over 15-day truce near capital
Syria’s army and rebels were locked in talks Wednesday night to reach a fifteen-day ceasefire in the Eastern Ghouta region east of the capital, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said. These are the first known talks aiming for a truce in the region and are likely taking place with Russian or Iranian mediators, SOHR said. If an agreement is reached, “A ceasefire in Eastern Ghouta would begin at 6:00 am Thursday and will last fifteen days,” SOHR head Rami Abdel Rahman said. A senior Syrian security source said, “Talks are ongoing between the government and a number of armed groups in Eastern Ghouta … to stop military operations. Our Russian allies are playing a direct role in contacting those that support the armed groups.” Jaysh al-Islam, the most powerful rebel group in Eastern Ghouta, was the main negotiating partner on the rebel side, Abdel Rahman added. [AFP, 11/19/2015]

Syria no breeding ground for ISIS, says Assad
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said Wednesday his country was not a breeding ground for ISIS, blaming the creation of the jihadist organization on the West. “I can tell you Daesh [ISIS] doesn’t have the natural incubator, social incubator, within Syria,” he said. Jihadists who trained in Syria for the Paris massacres and other attacks had done so due to “the support of the Turks and the Saudis and Qatari, and of course the Western policy that supported the terrorists in different ways,” he insisted. ISIS “didn’t start in Syria, it started in Iraq, and it started before that in Afghanistan,” he said, quoting former British prime minister Tony Blair as saying “the Iraqi war helped create ISIS”. Blair’s “confession is the most important evidence,” Assad added. [AFP, 11/19/2015]

Iraqi-Kurdish leader says Paris attacks a ‘wake-up call’
The head of intelligence and security in Iraqi Kurdistan, Masrour Barzani, has said he hopes last Friday’s attacks in Paris will act as a wake-up call to Western powers. Barzani said that ISIS could be defeated within months if the world community became fully engaged. Despite recent Kurdish success against ISIS at Sinjar, ISIS still controls large areas of Syria and Iraq and has not been significantly weakened. He said he hoped that the attacks in Paris, in which 129 people died, would be a game changer, spurring Western powers to become more involved in fighting the militants. He added that if Western countries were unwilling to send in ground troops, they should give greater support to forces such as the Kurdish fighters in both Iraq and Syria who were succeeding against the militants. [BBC, 11/18/2015]