Syrian opposition should be representative - Lavrov

The U.S. agrees the Syrian opposition should represent various forces, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday following a meeting with the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
“We have discussed it necessary to resume a political process of negotiations between the Syrian government and the opposition,” the Russian foreign minister said. “The secretary of state has agreed with our thesis the Syrian opposition should represent various groups, not only national coalitions featuring people, who left Syria quite a time ago and have not come to the country; there are also groups of domestic opposition, political teams, I mean. Thus, it is necessary to have the opposition representative.”
“We have also discussed what Russia and the U.S., the countries in the region could do to support the efforts to begin a national dialogue between all the Syrians, like it was suggested in the well-known Geneva statement of June 30, 2012,” Lavrov said.
The Islamic State
Russia and the U.S. will continue bringing closer their positions in methods for fighting terrorism, Lavrov said.

Among other topics, “we also discussed the situations in the Middle East and in northern Africa, first of all focusing on the major threat there - the threat of terrorism from the Islamic State and other groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and similar extremists,” Lavrov said.
“We have confirmed our position that fighting terrorism should be based on the international law, that we do not see any legal or even practical reasons to stop from cooperating with the Syrian government in that issue,” he said. “But the Americans follow their own approaches in this issue - they believe the coalition should be acting on its own, without addressing the UN Security Council, without a consent from the Syrian government. We do not share this approach.”
“Nobody argues terrorism is the major threat in the region, and we shall try to bring closer our positions in methods for fighting this threat,” the Russian foreign minister said.