Russian ship departs for Syria; Merkel sees regime ‘war crimes’

Agencies
German chancellor Angela Merkel delivers a speech at the meeting of her Christian Democrats' Youth Organization. JU, in Paderborn, Germany, on Saturday. (AP)

BERLIN: Some actions in Syria have come “very close to war crimes,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Saturday, calling the bombing of hospitals and underground facilities in the besieged city of Aleppo “inhuman.”
Merkel, speaking at a conference of her conservative Union bloc’s youth wing in the western German city of Paderborn, did not explicitly attribute responsibility for those actions in Syria, but her condemnation of them was strong.
“I think we are very close to war crimes,” she said. “Whether there are war crimes, the International Court of Justice decides ... the much more important thing would be, how we can stop it all and move on to a political process?
“Outrage and dismay are not enough — we have to try the impossible, we have to bring the parties to the conflict to one table,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who also has sought to move diplomatic efforts forward, told a meeting of his center-left Social Democrats in Potsdam, outside Berlin.
“We must struggle for every millimeter of progress on the way to a solution,” he said. “I hope that not just I, but others, will remain at the negotiating table ... there is no military solution in this conflict.”
Merkel wants to get other European Union member countries to agree to step up sanctions against Russia because of its role in the war in Syria, a German newspaper cited sources close to the German chancellor as saying.
The issue of sanctions is due to be discussed at an EU summit on Thursday and Friday. Both the EU and the United States have already imposed economic and other sanctions on Russia for its seizure of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, and for its support for pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.
The attack on a UN and Syrian Arab Red Crescent convoy in Syria last month and Russia’s actions in Aleppo have contributed to that, the newspaper cited the sources as saying.
Meanwhile, Russia’s flagship aircraft carrier set off Saturday for the Mediterranean Sea where Moscow’s naval forces are supporting its bombing campaign in Syria, the Defense Ministry said.
The deployment of the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier comes weeks after Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the ship would be sent to the eastern Mediterranean to boost the country’s naval forces in the area.
The Admiral Kuznetsov is traveling with the Pyotr Veliky battlecruiser, the Vice-Admiral Kulakov destroyer and large anti-submarine ships, the ministry said.
In addition to safeguarding maritime navigation, the ships are meant to “respond to new types of modern threats like piracy and international terrorism,” the ministry said.
This is the first time that the Soviet-era Kuznetsov — Russia’s only aircraft carrier part of its Northern fleet based in Murmansk — will join the Russian deployment after undergoing a refurbishment.
The ministry did not specify how long the aircraft carrier’s mission would last. Moscow has flown long-range bombing raids from bases in Russia and fired cruise missiles from ships in the Caspian Sea and a submarine in the Mediterranean.