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Kerry Meets With Putin Over Ukraine, Syria

MOSCOW (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday accepted Russia's long-standing demand that President Bashar Assad's future be determined by his own people, as Washington and Moscow edged toward putting aside years of disagreement over how to end Syria's civil war.

"The United States and our partners are not seeking so-called regime change," Kerry told reporters in the Russian capital after meeting President Vladimir Putin. A major international conference on Syria would take place later this week in New York, Kerry announced.

Kerry reiterated the U.S. position that Assad, accused by the West of massive human rights violations and chemical weapons attacks, won't be able to steer Syria out of more than four years of conflict.

But after a day of discussions with Assad's key international backer, Kerry said the focus now is "not on our differences about what can or cannot be done immediately about Assad." Rather, it is on facilitating a peace process in which "Syrians will be making decisions for the future of Syria."

Kerry's declarations crystallized the evolution in U.S. policy on Assad over the last several months, as the Islamic State group's growing influence in the Middle East has taken priority.

President Barack Obama first called on Assad to leave power in the summer of 2011, with "Assad must go" being a consistent rallying cry. Later, American officials allowed that he wouldn't have to resign on "Day One" of a transition. Now, no one can say when Assad might step down.

Kerry Calls For Common Ground With RussiaPlay video

Russia, by contrast, has remained consistent in its view that no foreign government could demand Assad's departure and that Syrians would have to negotiate matters of leadership among themselves. Since late September, it has been bombing terrorist and rebel targets in Syria as part of what the West says is an effort to prop up Assad's government.

"No one should be forced to choose between a dictator and being plagued by terrorists," Kerry said. However, he described the Syrian opposition's demand that Assad must leave as soon as peace talks begin as a "nonstarting position, obviously."

Earlier Tuesday in the Kremlin, Putin noted several "outstanding issues" between Russia and its former Cold War foe. Beyond Assad, these include which rebel groups in Syria should be allowed to participate in the transition process and which should be deemed terrorists, and like the Islamic State group and al-Qaida, combatted by all.

Jordan is working on finalizing the list of terrorist vs. legitimate opposition forces. Representatives of Syria's opposition themselves hope this week to finalize their negotiating team for talks with Assad's government. The U.S., Russia and others hope those talks will begin early next year.

Appearing beside Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov hailed what he described as a "big negotiating day," saying the sides advanced efforts to define what a Syrian transition process might look like.

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US Secretary of State John Kerry, left, speaks with Russia's President Vladimir Putin during a m …

The two countries also have split on Ukraine since Russia's annexation of the Crimea region last year and its ongoing, though diminished, support for separatist rebels in the east of the country. The U.S. has pressed severe economic sanctions against Russia in response and has insisted that Moscow's actions have left it isolated.

That wasn't the case on Tuesday.

"We don't seek to isolate Russia as a matter of policy, no," Kerry said. The sooner Russia implements a February cease-fire that calls for withdrawal of Russian forces and materiel and a release of all prisoners, he said, the sooner that "sanctions can be rolled back."

The world is better off when Russia and the U.S. work together, he added, calling Obama and Putin's current cooperation a "sign of maturity."

"There is no policy of the United States, per se, to isolate Russia," Kerry stressed.

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Klapper reported from Washington.

Geneva (AFP) - Many of the young girls Boko Haram sends out as suicide bombers in Nigeria and neighbouring countries are probably unaware that they will be blown up, a UN expert said Tuesday.

Boko Haram jihadists have in recent months increasingly used young women and girls as suicide bombers in northeast Nigeria, northern Cameroon, Chad and Niger, leaving death and destruction in their wake.

Leila Zerrougui, the UN secretary-general's special representative on children and armed conflict, suggested Tuesday that especially the children used in this way were in many cases not aware of what they were about to do.

"Many of them don't know that they will be blown up with remote devices," she told reporters, pointing out many of the girls are as young as 11 or 12.

"I personally doubt that the children know," Zerrougui said, adding that security forces had informed the UN that the bombs are often set off remotely.

"That means that it is not the person herself who did it," she said.

Zerrougui lamented that the use of children as human bombs is one of the worst manifestations of an increasingly blatant disregard for the safety and security of minors in conflict situations around the world.

Elsewhere, thousands of youngsters are used as soldiers and children as young as four or five are being used as human shields on battlefields by armed groups like the Islamic State or the anti-Balaka in the Central African Republic, she said.

"This is the worst form where children are really put in danger and their bodies are really used as a weapon," she insisted.

Zerrougui said that since she was appointed to her position in 2012, she has each year decried an increasingly dire situation for children caught up in conflicts, "and every year (it gets) even worse."

And 2015 was no exception.

"I can say that 2015 was really a difficult year for children all over the world where conflicts are ongoing," she said.

The world is currently dealing with six major conflicts, including in Syria and Yemen, compared to one or two normally.

And if you count protracted conflicts, a jaw-dropping 20 are currently impacting the lives of children around the world, she said.

"We have thousands of children killed, maimed, schools attacked and children by the thousands recruited in many places," she said.

"Children are not only affected, they are specifically targeted."

By Alex Dobuzinskis and Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Los Angeles shut more than 1,000 public schools on Tuesday over a threatened attack with bombs and assault rifles, sending hundreds of thousands of students home as city leaders were criticized for overreacting to what authorities later said was apparently a hoax.

The emailed threat, which authorities said was routed through Germany but likely originated locally, was made nearly two weeks after a married couple inspired by Islamic State killed 14 people and wounded 22 others at a county office building 60 miles (100 km) away in San Bernardino.

"Based on past circumstance, I could not take the chance," Los Angeles School Superintendent Ramon Cortines told a news conference early in the day.

But federal officials, who asked not to be identified, echoed an assessment by New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton that the decision in Los Angeles was an "overreaction." New York had received an almost identical threat that was quickly deemed not credible.

After more than 1,500 school district sites had been inspected by nightfall, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti conceded that the message appeared to have been a hoax.

"We can now announce the FBI has determined that this is not a credible threat," Garcetti said, adding that the incident required further investigation but "what we do know is, it will be safe for our children return to school tomorrow.

Despite that determination, Garcetti and Police Chief Charlie Beck stood by the decision to close the schools. They said New York officials had more time to assess the threat, which was sent to both districts from the same IP address.

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A police officer talks on his radio outside Mark Twain Middle School in Los Angeles, California Dece …

PARENTS FRUSTRATED, CONFUSED

But the unprecedented move at the second-largest public school system in the United States left some 643,000 students and their parents confused and frustrated.

City Councilman Joe Buscaino, who has two children in LAUSD schools, complained about the lack of a timely district-wide emergency alert system, pointing out that many students learned of the closures from their friends via social media.

"I disagree with closing the schools because we're just showing these people that we're scared of them," said Marisol Hadadi, whose son attends Marquez Elementary School in Pacific Palisades.

Ronna Bronstein, who has two sons in grade school, said she was trying to find out more while shielding her younger child from the news.

"I don't want him to be frightened to go back to school tomorrow," she said.

A 17-year-old boy was walking to his charter high school when he was struck and killed by a truck at 7:31 a.m., officials said, minutes after LAUSD said classes would be canceled for the day.

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A sign at Hamilton High School is pictured reading "School Closed" in Los Angeles, Califor …

A law enforcement source told Reuters that Los Angeles authorities ordered the closure to allow a full search of public school facilities without consulting with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which typically takes the lead on investigations into potential terrorism.

New York's Bratton, a former Los Angeles police chief, said: "To disrupt the daily schedules of half a million school children, their parents, day care, buses based on an anonymous email, without consultation, if in fact, consultation did not occur with law enforcement authorities, I think it was a significant overreaction."

Mayor Garcetti denied that assertion, saying his city had contacted federal law enforcement officials.

'32 JIHADIST FRIENDS'

Congressman Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California, told the New York Times that the writer of the email threat claimed to be a devout Muslim prepared to launch an attack using bombs, nerve gas and rifles with "32 jihadist friends" because he had been bullied at a Los Angeles high school.

Sherman told the paper that the number of attackers and claim to have nerve gas cast doubts on the credibility of the email, as did its author consistently failing to capitalize the word "Allah."

"While we continue to gather information about the threat made against the Los Angeles and New York School Departments, the preliminary assessment is that it was a hoax or something designed to disrupt school districts in large cities," Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives intelligence committee, said in a statement.

Cortines, who is expected to retire at the end of 2015, said the threat stood out from most the district received in its seriousness and scope, referencing multiple campuses and mentioning backpacks and other packages.

"I have been around long enough to know that usually what people think in the first few hours is not what plays out in later hours," said the mayor, Garcetti. "But decisions have to be made in a matter of minutes."

Police Chief Beck said it was "irresponsible" to criticize the decision in the aftermath of the Dec. 2 attack in San Bernardino.

That massacre and other mass shootings have pushed the issues of militant Islamism and gun violence to the forefront of the U.S. presidential campaign.

In addition to Los Angeles, the district serves all or parts of 31 smaller towns and cities as well as several unincorporated parts of Southern California.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis, Sara Catania, Sue Horton, Dana Feldman and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles, Curtis Skinner in San Francisco, Daniel Wallis in Denver, Scott Malone in Boston, Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago and Mark Hosenball, Susan Heavey and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe, Grant McCool and Lisa Shumaker)