Free Republic

The leaders of Turkey, Russia, France, and Germany have reiterated calls for a UN-backed political process to end the war in Syria that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after a summit in Istanbul on October 27 that "the meeting demonstrated there is common determination to solve the problem."A joint solution can be achieved, not through military means, but only through political effort under the UN aegis," she added.Along with Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and French President Emmanuel Macron gathered for the talks in search of an end to...

President Bush urged Moscow to abandon two Soviet-era military bases in Georgia as he met on Wednesday with the newly elected leader of the strategically placed Caucasus state. Sitting with President Mikhail Saakashvili in the Oval Office, Bush told reporters he would help build good relations between Georgia and Russia. He said Russia should honor a promise to remove the bases, which it made during the 1999 Istanbul summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "The Istanbul commitment made it very clear that Russia would leave those bases," Bush said after a closed-door meeting with Saakashvili, whose...