Johnson: Assad and Russians can't win Syria war

(skynews)- British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has said Syrian President Bashar al Assad and the Russians cannot win the war in Syria.

Mr Johnson was speaking at the conclusion of talks in London on the Syrian war, talks that included US Secretary of State John Kerry and counterparts from eight other countries.

He said: "I don't think that the Russian supporters and the Assad regime are capable of winning this war.

"I think it highly dubious that they'll even be able to take Aleppo," he said.

Both Britain and the US warned that western powers are considering imposing sanctions against Syria and Russia over the five-year siege of the Syrian city of Aleppo, which Mr Kerry described as constituting "crimes against humanity".

But when asked at what point it would be decided that "enough is enough", he said: "I haven't seen a big appetite in Europe for people to go to war.

"I don't see the parliaments of European countries ready to declare war, I don't see a lot of countries deciding that that's the better solution here.

"So we are pursuing diplomacy because those are the tools that we have and we're trying to find a way forward under those circumstances."

Mr Kerry also met with Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov for talks in Switzerland on Saturday.

Mr Johnson agreed that the allies must work with the diplomatic "tools we have", suggesting his comments last week of the need to discuss "more kinetic options" may not have the support of the other countries.

"No option is in principle off the table but be in no doubt that these so-called military options are extremely difficult and there is, to put it mildly, a lack of political appetite in most European capitals and certainly in the West for that kind of solution at present.

"So we've got to work with the tools we have - the tools we have are diplomatic.

"I think the most powerful weapon we have at the moment is our ability to make president Putin and the Russians feel the consequences of what they are doing."

The talks come just hours after Turkish-backed rebels captured the symbolic northern Syrian town of Dabiq.

Dabiq has little strategic value but it is ideologically important to the Islamic State jihadists, who promised to make it the site of a final 'Doomsday' battle between Christians and Muslims.

Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency said troops were now working to dismantle explosives laid by the retreating Islamic States troops.