Former
President Jimmy Carter said recently that he provided maps of Islamic
State positions in Syria to the Russian embassy in Washington, a move
apparently at odds with the Obama administration’s official policy of
not cooperating with Russia in the Syrian war.
Carter said on Sunday in Georgia that he knows Russian President Vladimir Putin“fairly well” because they “have a common interest in fly fishing.” When he met with Putin in
April along with other global leaders to discuss the crises in Syria
and Ukraine, the Russian president gave him an email address so the two
could discuss his “fly fishing experiences, particularly in Russia,”
Carter said.
The civil war in Syria, where U.S. officials say Russia has bombed rebels and CIA-backed groups rather than the Islamic State terrorist group, has also been a topic of conversation between the two. Carter said he sent maps of the Islamic State’s locations in Syria, produced by the Carter Center, to the Russian embassy so Moscow could improve the accuracy of its strikes.
Carter
has previously expressed support for Russia and its actions in Ukraine,
where Moscow has supported separatists with weapons and troops against
Ukrainian forces backed by the United States.
“I sent Putin a message Thursday and asked him if he wanted a copy of our map so he could bomb accurately in Syria, and then on Friday,
the Russian embassy in Atlanta—I mean in Washington, called down and
told me they would like very much to have the map,” Carter said at his Sunday school
class in Georgia, according to a video of his remarks first aired by
NBC News. “So in the future, if Russia doesn’t bomb the right places,
you’ll know it’s not Putin’s fault but it’s my fault,” he added as the
audience laughed.
Obama administration officials have publicly said the United States will not collaborate with Russia as
long as it targets U.S.-backed rebels in an effort to prop up Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad, a longtime ally of Moscow. The administration
has said Assad must eventually step down as part of efforts to seek a
political resolution to the Syrian war. “We are not prepared to
cooperate on strategy which, as we explained, is flawed, tragically
flawed, on the Russians’ part,” said Ash Carter, U.S. defense secretary,
earlier this month.
However,
Carter appears to have reached out to Putin on his own initiative and
urged him to find common ground with the United States by only targeting
the Islamic State in Syria.
Cmdr.
Elissa Smith, spokeswoman for the Department of Defense, declined to
comment about whether the Pentagon was aware of Carter’s correspondence
with Putin.
“I
can’t speak to whether anyone in the Pentagon was aware the Carter
Center provided maps to the Russia Embassy,” she said in an email.
Carter
has previously expressed support for Russia and its actions in Ukraine,
where Moscow has supported separatists with weapons and troops against
Ukrainian forces backed by the United States. After meeting with Putin
earlier this year, Carter said Russia’s annexation of the Crimean
peninsula in Ukraine was “inevitable” and was what residents wanted—a
stance that conflicts with most international observers who have said
that Russia illegally invaded Crimea and held an illegitimate
referendum.
He
also said last year that the United States should not impose more
sanctions on Russia and that he believed “Putin is not going to use
military force” in eastern Ukraine. “I don’t think there is anything we
can do that is going to deter Putin,” he said at the time.
Russia
is currently supporting Iran and its regional militias with airstrikes
as the pro-Assad forces prepare an offensive on the major Syrian city of
Aleppo. The Islamic State is reported to have benefited from the
Russian strikes on rebels as the terrorist group moved in from the north
to gain more territory.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday
that the United States had signed an agreement with Russia in an
attempt to avoid incidents in Syrian airspace, where American planes are
also bombing Islamic State positions.
Peter
Cook, Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement that the memorandum
with Russia “does not establish zones of cooperation, intelligence
sharing, or any sharing of target information in Syria” and does “not
constitute U.S. cooperation or support for Russia’s policy or actions in
Syria.” source
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