By Mariam Karouny and Sylvia Westall

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria said on Monday it would cooperate in any international effort to fight Islamic State militants, after Washington signaled it was considering extending the battle against the group into Syrian territory.

Russia, the most prominent foreign backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, also urged Western and Arab nations to overcome their distaste of the government in Damascus and engage with it to fight the hardline insurgents.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem held open the possibility of working with a range of countries, including the United States, Britain and Saudi Arabia, all of which supported the uprising against Assad.

Moualem presented his country as a vital partner in a war against Islamic State, which has seized areas of Syria and Iraq and declared a "caliphate" in the territories it controls.

"Syria, geographically and operationally, is the center of the international coalition to fight Islamic State," Moualem said in a televised news conference. "States must come to it if they are serious in combating terrorism," he added.

Asked about the prospect of U.S. air raids against Islamic State inside Syria, Moualem said any strikes would have to be coordinated with Damascus. "Anything outside this is considered aggression," he told reporters.

Asked if Syria was ready to work with the United States and Britain in fighting the group, he said: "They are welcome."

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Worshipers look at blood stains inside the Imam Ali mosque after a suicide bomb attack in New Baghda …

He also called for intelligence sharing with neighboring states and suggested cooperation would be possible with Saudi Arabia, another major backer of the anti-Assad uprising that has shown increasing alarm about Islamic State.

The White House signaled on Friday it was considering taking the fight against Islamic State into Syria after days of air strikes against the group in Iraq and the beheading of a U.S. journalist.

But Washington has also supported a more than three-year-old insurgency in Syria, which has killed at least 191,000 people, and there has been no sign of any shift in U.S. policy towards Assad. Britain has also ruled out negotiating with him.

"He's part of the problem," Ben Rhodes, President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, said last week. Last year, Washington came close to bombing Syria after accusing Assad's forces of using chemical weapons.

"NO BORDERS"

Islamic State, an offshoot of al Qaeda which draws some of its strength from foreign fighters, has emerged as the strongest group in the insurgency. Its thousands of fighters control roughly a third of Syria, with territory in the north and east.

Until recently, direct engagements between the Syrian army and Islamic State were rare. Activists and Western officials accused the Syrian army of leaving the group to its own devices as it was crushing less radical opposition factions.

The government has mostly focused its military efforts on beating back insurgents in a strategic corridor of territory stretching north from Damascus -- areas far from the group's strongholds where it has less of a presence.

The pattern of conflict has changed in recent weeks, with hundreds of government loyalist fighters killed in engagements with the group as it has sought to expand further in Syria, strengthened by weaponry brought in from Iraq.

Assad has characterized his opponents as extremists from the start of the uprising in 2011, when his forces violently suppressed protesters inspired by the Arab Spring. Critics say the reaction of security forces helped radicalize them.

On Sunday, Islamic State fighters captured an air base in northeast Syria after days of fighting that cost more than 500 lives, according to a monitoring group.

"Islamic State has no borders and the faster we move against it, the more we diminish its danger," Moualem said.

Moualem also condemned the killing of U.S. journalist James Foley, who was beheaded by the Islamic State, apparently in Syria. The Pentagon has said the U.S. military failed in a secret rescue attempt of Foley and other U.S. hostages.

"If it is confirmed and this military operation did take place and failed, I say if there were prior coordination then the possibility of its failure would have been very low," Moualem said.

(Writing by Tom Perry/Sylvia Westall; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Crispian Balmer)

As the U.S. says it could expand its fight against ISIS, Syrian officials present their country as a partner in the battle.
Attacks need approval

The reported incursion came a day ahead of a summit that includes both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and could be aimed at pressuring Ukraine into seeking a negotiated end to the conflict rather than a military victory.

Over the past month, Ukrainian forces have made substantial inroads against pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine, taking control of several sizeable towns and cities that had been under rebel control since April, when the clashes began.

But the advances have come at a high cost — more than 2,000 civilians reportedly killed and at least 726 Ukrainian servicemen. There is no independent figure for the number of rebel dead, although Ukrainian authorities said Monday that 250 rebels were in fighting around Olenivka, a town 25 kilometers (15 miles) south of Donetsk.

Intense fighting and shelling persists for the two major rebel-held cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Col. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's National Security Council, told reporters that the column of 10 tanks, two armored vehicles and two trucks crossed the border near the village of Shcherbak and that shells were fired from Russia toward the nearby city of Novoazovsk. He said they were Russian military vehicles bearing the flags of the separatist Donetsk rebels. The village is in the Donetsk region, but not under the control of the rebels.

The Ukrainian National Guard later said two of the tanks had been destroyed.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday he had no information about the column.

The reported incursion and shelling could indicate an attempt to move on Mariupol, a major port on the Azov Sea, an arm of the Black Sea. Mariupol lies on the main road between Russia and Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Russia annexed in March. Capturing Mariupol could be the first step in building a slice of territory that links Russia with Crimea.

Although Mariupol is in Ukraine's separatist Donetsk region, most of the fighting between rebels and Ukrainian troops has been well to the north. A full offensive in the south could draw Ukrainian forces away from the city of Donetsk.

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Pro-Russian gunmen guard parade dozens of captured Ukrainian soldiers during a march in mockery of t …

Lysenko said Mariupol for now has enough defenders "to repel any attack of uninvited guests."

Still, a wider war in the east would put new strains on Ukraine's military, which initially struggled with longtime underfunding and disorganization against the rebel threat.

Ukraine of late has appeared bent on beating the rebels militarily, but pressure is growing for a negotiated settlement. German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with Poroshenko on Saturday and called for a political solution.

Poroshenko and Putin are among a group of leaders gathering Tuesday in Minsk, Belarus, for a summit, but it unclear whether they will meet one-on-one to discuss the crisis.

Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said Monday that he hoped European Union officials, who will also be at the summit, "will come prepared to use their influence on the Ukrainian side."

Ukraine and the West say that Russia is supporting and supplying the rebels. NATO says since mid-August, Russia has fired into Ukraine from across the border and from within Ukrainian territory. Moscow denies those allegations.

Fighting continued elsewhere in the east, notably around Olenivka. Lysenko said Monday about 250 separatists had been killed in that fighting, but did not specify in what time period. On Sunday, rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko said two-thirds of Olenivka had been wrested away from Ukrainian control.

Ukrainian forces had made significant inroads against the separatists in recent weeks, but the rebels have vowed to retake lost territory.

Russia's unilateral dispatch of over 200 trucks into Ukraine on Friday was denounced by the Ukrainian government as an invasion and condemned by the United States, the European Union and NATO. Even though the tractor-trailers returned to Russia without incident Saturday, the announcement of another convoy was likely to raise new suspicions.

Lavrov said the food, water and other goods the convoy delivered Friday to the hard-hit rebel city of Luhansk were being distributed Monday and that Red Cross workers were involved in talks on how best to do that. There was no immediate confirmation from the Red Cross.

In sending in the first convoy, Russia said it had lost patience with what it called Ukraine's stalling tactics. It claimed that soon "there will no longer be anyone left to help" in Luhansk, where weeks of heavy shelling have cut off power, water and phone service and made food scarce.

The Ukrainian government had said the aid convoy was a ploy by Russia to get supplies to the rebels and slow down the government's military advances.

On Sunday, as Ukraine celebrated the anniversary of its 1991 independence from Moscow, Poroshenko announced that the government would be increasing its military spending in a bid to defeat the rebels.

In rebel-held Donetsk, captured Ukrainian soldiers were paraded that same day through the streets, jeered by the crowd and pelted with eggs and tomatoes.

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Peter Leonard in Donetsk, Ukraine, and Lynn Berry in Moscow contributed to this report

Ukraine: Russian tanks enter southeast

Ten tanks, two armored vehicles and trucks cross near a city shelled by Russia overnight, a Kiev official says.
Moscow's response

America Keeps People Poor on Purpose: A Timeline of Choices Made to Increase Inequality

Illustration: Dan Perjovschi

By YES! Editors, YES Magazine, August 22, 2014 – http://tinyurl.com/mo5llwd

In his deeply researched book Who Stole the American Dream?, Pulitzer Price-winning journalist Hedrick Smith reports on the structural choices that have brought the united States to a crisis of inequality.

He describes “the heyday of the middle class”, from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s, when higher wages gave tens of millions of families steady income to spend, generating consumer demand, expansion of production and higher living standards.

Social movements of the 1960s, building on labor agreements from earlier decades, pushed forward new legal protections for consumers and the environment.

Smith’s detailed timeline from the book, excerpted and adapted below, charts how strategic lobbying and legislation over the next four decades gave corporations dominion over the economy and eroded the security of the American middle class.

This infographic was featured in The End of Poverty, the Fall 2014 issue of YES! Magazine. It was adapted from Who Stole the American Dream? by Hedrick Smith. Random House Publishing Group, 2012, 592 pages.