"Of course, we look forward that this memorandum will achieve its intentions which are basically separating the armed groups which signed the agreement of the cessation of hostilities on 30/12/2016 from Jabhat al-Nusra and the ISIS and the other groups affiliated to them", Moallem said.
Project Democracy, a US government watchdog, has filed a legal action under the Freedom of Information Act to force the Trump administration to disclose all emails, memos and other conversations discussing the legality of the strike.
(AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin). Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin attends a briefing in the Defense Ministry in Moscow, Russia, Friday, May 5, 2017.
"We do not accept a role for the United Nations or global forces to monitor the agreement", he told reporters in Damascus.
Russia, Turkey and Iran agreed to a cease-fire between Syrian government and opposition forces in four undecided locations.
Iran, Russia and Turkey brokered the deal during talks in the Kazakh capital, Astana.
The establishment of safe zones is the latest global attempt to reduce violence amid a six-year civil war that has left more than 400,000 dead, and is the first to envisage armed foreign monitors on the ground in Syria.
"If any violation takes place, the Syrian army will be prepared to respond in a decisive manner", Syrian state-run SANA news reported Moallem as saying in Damascus on Monday.
But details of the memorandum the three guarantors signed were sketchy, while the main Syrian opposition group said it lacked all legitimacy.
Final details still need to be worked out, including questions on how the Syrians and rebels plan to tone down the violence. The move, welcomed by the United Nations, has been met with scepticism from the United States as the so-called safe-zones will be closed for warplanes of the United States and those of the US -led coalition. As the bombs fell, al-Lataminah's local council declared the city a disaster area on Saturday, the first day the de-escalation zone was in effect. "All these details are to be worked out", Mattis told reporters, according to Pentagon transcripts.
Germany's foreign ministry said it was anxious by reports of violations but that successfully implementing the deal could be the first step towards a real ceasefire in Syria. But officials have expressed skepticism, stressing that safe zones have not had an encouraging track record.
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Associated Pres writer Josh Lederman contributed to this report.
As the foreign minister spoke to reporters, hundreds of rebels and their families began boarding buses to leave a besieged opposition-held neighborhood of Damascus for rebel-held areas in the country's north, according to state TV and opposition activists.
"We need a bit more information about what this agreement means and implies, and if we get that I'm sure we could agree to a good and supportive resolution", said Olof Skoog, Sweden's United Nations ambassador.
Fighting erupted in Syria between government forces and rebels.
Keep it civilized, keep it relevant, keep it clear, keep it short.
He said his country opposed the presence of foreign forces, which were backers to the rebels, noting that Russian Federation is on the same page with Damascus in that regard.
Syrian state TV said rebels shelled the central government-held town of Mahrade but had no immediate word on casualties.
Syrian, Russian, Turkish and US-led coalition aircraft operate in different, sometimes same areas in Syria. And he suggested that it's still not yet clear what impact the plan could have on the USA -led fight against Islamic State militants.
The state department previewed their conversation in a statement on the meeting saying the two intend "to discuss efforts to de-escalate violence, provide humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people, and set the stage for a political settlement of the conflict".
Al-Moallem asserted that there will not be worldwide forces under the supervision of the United Nations, and the Russian guarantor clarified that military police forces will be deployed, in addition to monitoring centers, noting that the memo on de-escalation zones has a duration of six months that can be renewed if this experiment proves successful and produces the desired results.
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