Moscow Struggles to Identify Moderate Rebels in Syria

The Kremlin said Friday Moscow has not yet found any moderate rebels it could support in Syria, after Bashar Assad reportedly told Russia he was ready to talk to armed rebels.

This week President Vladimir Putin hosted Syria's embattled leader for a surprise summit at the Kremlin, Assad's first known foreign trip since unrest erupted in his country in 2011.

On Thursday, Putin said Assad had told him he was ready to talk to armed opposition groups if they were really committed to fighting Islamic State jihadists.

At the same time, the Kremlin said Russia was struggling to identify any moderate rebels it could work with in the war-torn country.

"From the very beginning of the Syria operation, President Putin and other representatives of Russia have spoken of our readiness to cooperate with the so-called moderate opposition," Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.

"At the same time we had to stress that we have been unable to single out the so-called moderate opposition."

"Unfortunately, there is not a single central force which one could cooperate with," he said.

"All the difficulties arise from this."

"Unfortunately, neither our American nor our European colleagues, nor others are so far able to help us with identifying them."

Peskov's remarks came as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov went into key talks on the Syrian crisis with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Vienna.

Speaking at a meeting of political scholars known as the Valdai Club on Thursday, Putin said he and Assad discussed Russia's possible support for armed rebels in Syria.

"I asked him: what do you think if we find armed Syrian opposition which is ready to oppose and truly fight terrorists, the IS," he was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

"What would you think if we support their efforts in the fight against terrorists in the same way we are supporting the Syrian army?"

"He replied: 'I would view this positively.'"

"We are now thinking about this and trying to implement these agreements, if it works out," Putin added.

Western countries have accused Russia of targeting Western-backed opposition groups with air strikes that Moscow says are aimed at Islamic State militants, and of making little distinction between jihadists and moderate rebels.

Earlier this month Russia said it was ready to establish contacts with Syria's main Western-backed moderate opposition group, the Free Syrian Army, to find a political solution to a crisis that claimed more than 250,000 lives since 2011.