KHABAROVSK, November 17. /TASS/. The United States and its coalition seem to be sparing the Islamic State organisation so that while it weakens Syrian President Bashar Assad, it can never take power in Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Vesti.doc programme on Rossiya-1 television on Tuesday.

"The problem around the U.S.-led coalition is that despite the fact that they declared its goal in fighting exclusively the Islamic State and other terrorists and pledged not to take any action against the Syrian army (life has proved they never went back from their words), analysis of the strikes delivered by the United States and its coalition at terrorist positions over the past year drives us to a conclusion that these were selective, I would say sparing, strikes and in the majority of cases spared those Islamic State groups that were capable of pressing the Syrian army," he said.

"It looks like a cat that wants to eat a fish but doesn’t want to wet its feet. They want the Islamic State to weaken Assad as soon as possible to force him to step down this or that way but they don’t want to see Islamic State strong enough to take power."