Western leaders urge Putin at G20 to change course in Syria

World leaders at the G20 summit in Turkey have made fresh overtures to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to reach a deal to unite against Islamic State (Isis) and end the Syrian civil war in the wake of terror attacks in Paris on Friday and the recent downing of a Russian plane in Sinai.

In a bid to persuade Putin that Russia had a shared interest in ending the Syrian civil war on mutually agreeable terms, President Obama held an unscheduled 35-minute meeting on Sunday at the summit of the world’s 20 major economies. David Cameron will on Monday urge Putin to stop bombing Syrian moderate forces opposed to Assad, and instead focus on Isis.

Russia and western leaders have been at loggerheads on whether a peace process can endure with Assad remaining as president. 

But the tone at the summit on Sunday suggested the British government was eager to find a political solution, building on talks held on Syria’s future in Vienna on Saturday, and Cameron is expected to reassure Putin that however the political transition ends in Syria, Russian commercial political and military interests could be protected.

Cameron has not met Putin since the last G20 summit at Brisbane in 2014, but he has twice spoken to Putin by phone since the downing of the Russian plane in a suspected bomb, for which an Isis affiliate claimed responsibility. The British government may be willing to put to one side long standing differences over the Russian incursion into Ukraine to try to reach a breakthrough over Syria.

Cameron said on Sunday: “The conversation I want to have with Putin is to say, look, there is one thing we agree about which is we would be safer in Russia, we would be safer in Britain, if we destroy Isis. That is what we should be focussing on.”

He added: “Britain had its differences with the Russians, not least because they have done so much to degrade the non-Isil [Isis] opposition to Assad – people who could be part of the future of Syria.”

British diplomatic sources have proved to be overly optimistic in the past about Putin’s willingness to abandon Assad, but their hope is that a mixture of reassurances, the weakness of the Russian economy and a clear terrorist threat posed to Russian civilians by Isis will persuade Putin to take a more flexible approach. Western sources have suggested Assad could be part of an 18-month transition process in Syria.

The more limited aim may be to persuade Putin that Russia and the west’s immediate and greater mutual self interest is the destruction of Isis, and that this end requires recalibrating Russia’s bombing campaign.

The five leading western nations involved in the Syria crisis – the so-called quintet of the US, Italy, Germany, France and the UK – are to hold an unscheduled meeting on Monday lunchtime in Turkey to review the Syrian peace process and discuss what assurances can be given to persuade Russia that a deal over Syria is possible that will protect their interests.

Discussion at G20 will also focus on military campaigns in Syria. There was little sign from the British camp that Cameron thinks the Paris massacre will change the situation in the British parliament, and he was still short of the number of votes needed to be sure he could win parliamentary approval to extendBritish air strikes from Iraq into Syria.

However, Cameron said “it is becoming ever more clear that our safety and and security depends on degrading and ultimately destroying Isis, whether it is Syria or Iraq. We are playing a huge role already in that in Iraq. Others are taking action in Syria, which we both support and enable, but we have got to keep on making the case that we will be safer in the UK, in France and right across Europe if we destroy the death cult once and for all.”

The US promised it will work with France to intensify air strikes against Isis in Syria and Iraq, US deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said on Sunday. Rhodes said getting arms directly to fighters on the ground in Syria and Iraq seemed to be working in the fight against Isis.

“Clearly there’s going to have to be an intensification of our efforts,” Rhodes said in an interview with US network NBC’s Meet the Press on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Turkey. France began its own air strikes in September.

G20 leaders also vowed in a draft communique to do more to strengthen border controls and airport security.

EU leaders acknowledge that free movement inside Europe under the so-called Schengen agreement is now under its gravest threat due to recent terrorist attacks. French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve had asked for an urgent EU-level meeting of interior ministers to strengthen borders and tighten firearms controls.

But Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, said EU states should not give in to base reactions. “The one responsible for the attacks in Paris … he is a criminal and not a refugee and not an asylum seeker,” he told a news conference on the sidelines of a G20 summit of world leaders in the Turkish coastal province of Antalya.

“I would invite those in Europe who try to change the migration agenda we have adopted – I would like to remind them to be serious about this and not to give in to these basic reactions that I do not like,” Juncker added.

Nevertheless, Bavarian allies of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, raised the pressure to reverse her “open door” refugee policy, saying the attacks underlined the need for tougher measures to control the number of migrants arriving in the country.

“The days of uncontrolled immigration and illegal entry can’t continue just like that. Paris changes everything,” said Markus Soeder, the finance minister of Bavaria – the state where most asylum seekers have arrived in Germany.

Speaking to the newspaper Welt am Sonntag, Soeder stressed his Bavarian conservative party still supported the chancellor, but added: “It would be good if Angela Merkel acknowledged that the opening of the border for an unlimited period of time was a mistake.”

Donald Tusk, the EU president, says signs have emerged that attacks on moderate opposition forces in Syria are causing a further increase in the number of refugees.

Tusk told reporters at the G20 summit in Turkey on Sunday that such attacks will “only result (in) a new wave of refugees. And we have some signals that in fact it’s started.”