“A big part of the agreement serves the regime and doesn’t apply pressure on it and doesn’t serve the Syrian people”, said Zakaria Malahifji of the Aleppo-based rebel group Fastaqim.
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Yet the new blueprint appears to suffer from a fundamental imbalance common to the earlier efforts.
Under the terms of the agreement, the US and Russian Federation will coordinate to target the Islamic State group in Syria and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, while rebels and the Syrian government will be expected to stop attacking one another.
Rebel factions in Syria expressed deep reservations on Sunday about the terms of a U.S.
Under terms of the cease-fire, Russian Federation and the USA would attempt to ensure the regime and opposition groups stop fighting for seven days.
The cease-fire agreement, announced early Saturday in Geneva by Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, calls for an end to fighting between the USA -backed Syrian opposition and Syrian government forces, including its allies Russia and Iran.
Suspicion that Moscow won’t live up to its word has fueled Pentagon skepticism of Kerry’s plan.
At least 62 people, including 13 women and 13 children, were killed in Saturday’s bombardment on Idlib city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said Sunday.
Washington must persuade Syrian rebels to break ranks with Fath al-Sham, an al-Qaida-linked group previously known as the Nusra Front, which has intermingled with US -backed fighters. They said the agreement neglected besieged areas and called for aid to be taken to all those places without exception.
The U.S. -Russia deal to put Syria’s peace process back on track has only just begun.
Aleppo, a major battleground in the conflict, has seen intensified fighting between government forces and the opposition in recent months, worsening the humanitarian situation there.
Assad’s government appeared to tighten its siege of the former Syrian commercial hub in the last several days, seizing several key transit points.
Syrian state news agency SANA reported that the “government has approved the agreement, and a cessation of hostilities will begin in Aleppo for humanitarian reasons”.
Mikhail Bogdanov’s comments on Monday came hours before a cease-fire was scheduled to go into effect in Syria at sunset.
On the ground, residents were split on whether a truce could hold, saying they were exhausted after several rounds of failed ceasefires, most recently in February.
The opposition’s political umbrella group, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), cautiously welcomed the agreement, but said it required “effective enforcement mechanisms” if any truce deal is to “credible”.
It also allows the government to continue to strike the Islamic State group and al-Qaida-linked militants for another week.
Many senior United States military and intelligence officials have been sceptical about working with Russian Federation and especially wary of sharing battlefield intelligence with the Kremlin.
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Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, one of the most powerful factions in Syria, is part of the Fatah Army coalition that played an instrumental role in the fighting against Assad’s forces over the past year in northern Syria.
