BAGHDAD/MOSCOW (Dispatches) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Wednesday to make good on U.S. pledges to separate Washington-oriented units of "moderate” militants from "terrorist groups," Russia's Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
Lavrov told Kerry in a telephone conversation that warlords from Jabhat Fatah al-Sham had openly spoken about foreign support, including supplies of U.S. weapons. Jabhat Fatah al-Sham was formerly known as the Nusra Front until a recent break with Al-Qaeda for strategic reasons.
The two diplomacy chiefs also discussed possible ways of influencing the situation in the Syrian city of Aleppo based on the principles of a U.S.-Russian ceasefire plan, the ministry said.
The U.S. State Department said earlier on Wednesday that Kerry had threatened during the call with Lavrov to halt joint work with Russia on Syria unless Russia moved to end the assault on Aleppo and to restore the defunct ceasefire.

U.S. to Send More Troops to Iraq

The United States will send about 600 more troops to Iraq to help Iraqi forces retake the city of Mosul from Daesh, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Wednesday.
The troops will train and advise Iraqi forces, provide logistics support, and help in intelligence efforts, Carter told reporters while traveling in New Mexico.
A senior U.S. defense official said the exact number of new troops would be 615, and that they would be joining the effort "in the coming weeks."
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had announced earlier Wednesday that Washington would send more troops to help local forces.
"American President Barack Obama was consulted on a request from the Iraqi government for a final increase in the number of trainers and advisers under the umbrella of the international coalition in Iraq," he said in a statement.
Abadi met Obama and Vice President Joe Biden last week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, though it was not clear whether the agreement was sealed there.
U.S. Army General Joseph Votel, who oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East, told Reuters in July the U.S. military expected to seek additional troops in Iraq.
The United States has 4,565 troops in Iraq. Iraqi forces, including Kurdish peshmerga forces and Shia militias, have retaken around half of that territory over the past two years but Mosul, the largest city under Daesh’s control anywhere across its self-proclaimed caliphate, is likely to be the biggest battle yet.
U.S. and Iraqi commanders say the push on the city could begin by the second half of October.
Current U.S. troop levels in Iraq are still a fraction of the 170,000 deployed at the height of the nine-year occupation that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, sparking an Al-Qaeda-backed insurgency and throwing the country into a sectarian war.
Loath to become mired in another conflict overseas, the White House has insisted there would be no American "boots on the ground." While U.S. troops were initially confined to a few military bases, Americans have inched closer to the action as the campaign progresses.