by Our Foreign Desk

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin urged all Middle Eastern nations yesterday to support the Syrian government’s fight against Islamic State (Isis).

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem held talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov before being whisked to the Kremlin to meet with Mr Putin.

The president told the Syrian minister that Russia’s “policy to support Syria, the Syrian leadership and the Syrian people remains unchanged.”

Speaking after the meeting, Mr al-Moallem said he was assured that Russia would “continue to help Syria politically, economically and militarily.”

Mr Putin also urged other Middle Eastern countries to help Syria fight the armed Islamist factions that now control parts of the Syrian capital Damascus and large parts of its suburbs.

A mortar shell wounded three people in a central Damascus square yesterday, after three were killed in a similar attack on a market on Sunday.

Mr Putin said that Moscow’s contacts with other countries in the region, including with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, “show that everyone wants to contribute to fight this evil.”

He exhorted all nations in the region, whatever their relations with Syria were, to “pool their efforts together” to fight Islamic militants.

His call came as the US admitted that its $500 millon (£317 million) programme to train Syrian rebel groups, ostensibly to fight Isis, had fewer than 100 active recruits out of an annual target of 5,400.

Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren claimed that thousands of would-be recruits had failed vetting procedures designed to weed out Islamic extremists.