Wednesday’s Syrian High Negotiations Committee meeting will propose a “gradual transition”, Johnson said.
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But Mr Johnson has now embraced the HNC statement.
Carter told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour Wednesday that Russian Federation will bear responsibility for Assad’s actions Syria. Various media outlets have reported that Assad likely didn’t turn over the chemical weapons he was required to under the 2013 deal.
The HNC vision was unveiled under the auspices of the British Foreign Minister, Mr. Boris Johnson, and in the presence of a number of foreign ministers.
He points to the HNC’s transition plan as an answer to what will replace Mr Assad – “a safe space, free from terror, to which migrants can return”.
Kerry, who called in at the meeting, said there is a “new map being drawn up between the U.S. and Russia” that would require the Syrian government not to fly over territory controlled by moderate rebels; areas where there are civilians; and regions with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham fighters, Bays reported.
He hailed the efforts of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to reach the ceasefire agreement, calling on “all parties to the Syria conflict and all countries with influence upon them to do what is needed to end violence and lift sieges”.
The Syrian government’s crime in the eyes of the West is not the lack of democracy – how could it possibly be given the longstanding alliance between Western governments and Saudi Arabia, run by a clutch of medieval potentates? – but rather the fact that Syria under Assad has long refused to bend the knee to United States and Western hegemony, especially with regard to the country’s support for the Lebanese resistance movement, Hezbollah, and its friendship and alliance with Iran.
The State Department said it was making progress with Russian Federation on a ceasefire in Syria, even as the White House signaled it was ready to walk away soon if talks didn’t achieve a good agreement and the Pentagon attacked Moscow’s role in the civil war there.
“All parties to the conflict, other than groups designated as terrorist organisations by the United Nations Security Council, must now ensure its effective implementation”, she said.
“It calls for the establishment of a transitional governing body to protect the country’s unity, safeguarding the state and its institutions, promoting the principles of freedom, equality and citizenship”.
The document said minority groups would have their rights protected and an “inclusive national dialogue” would be launched with “no exceptions or exclusions”.
“They propose a gradual transition”.
It stresses it is not seeking swaths of the Syrian state officials to quit in the kind of disastrous clear-out of thousands of regime officials that led to chaos and sectarian reprisals in Iraq in 2003.
But, he said, they were still keeping Assad in power because of concerns over what happens after he leaves. “This is an attempt to tell the global community there is a way though this conflict”.
Separately, records show that Saudi Arabia has used its $8 million contract with global PR giant MSLGroup to help the Syrian opposition with “media support”.
“Very big questions remain surrounding how exactly the US and Russian Federation plan to determine areas where the opposition is sufficiently distant from Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, and where they are in fact too close and thus legitimate counter-terrorism targets”, said Charles Lister, a Middle East Institute fellow who has written a book on jihadist dynamics in the Syria conflict.
There are also questions about the extent to which the HNC still speaks for the military factions inside Syria fighting Mr Assad and Isis, including the Kurdish YPG.
Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said the capture came after reinforcements of Iraqi and Iranian pro-government militiamen arrived south of the city earlier this week.
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The relatively new British foreign minister will host a Friends of Syria meeting in London later on Wednesday.
