Russia and US call urgent talks after Syria strikes

Russia and United States agreed Sept.30 to call urgent military talks to head off the risk of clashes between their forces, after Moscow's dramatic entrance into the Syrian war.

Senior US officials expressed alarm after Russian warplanes began their first military engagement outside the former Soviet Union since the occupation of Afghanistan in 1979.
   
The Americans accused Russia of striking moderate rebel factions fighting Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime under cover of their claimed assault on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
 
And they complained the US-led coalition already fighting its own air war against the jihadists had only been given a heads-up by a Russian general in Baghdad one hour before bombing began.
 
But, after sharp public comments in Washington and the United Nations, US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian opposite number Sergei Lavrov put a brave face on the dispute.
 
Appearing together on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, they said they would hold "de-confliction" talks and had drawn up proposals to relaunch a Syrian political peace process.
 
"We agreed on the imperative of as soon as possible -- perhaps even as soon as tomorrow, but as soon as possible -- having a military to military de-confliction discussion," Kerry said.
 
Lavrov agreed their talks had been useful and both men said they would take their ideas for the political process back to their respective presidents, Russia's Vladimir Putin and the US's Barack Obama.
 
But the narrow agreement to seek a mechanism to avoid accidental encounters between Russian and US-led forces could not disguise the deep divisions Moscow's actions had revealed.