U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura says a resumption of the stalled intra-Syrian peace talks is likely to hinge on the outcome of bilateral talks between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, scheduled for Friday. While Kerry said this week that technical teams from both sides were close to the end of their discussions, US officials indicated it was too early to say whether an agreement was likely.
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During the presser, which was preceded by a 12-hour-long meeting between the two sides, Lavrov said that both countries had agreed to boost their military cooperation to settle the years-long crisis, and on ways to accelerate the peace process in the Arab country. “And in the next days our experts will be meeting here in Geneva to conclude the few remaining technical issues and to move forward to take steps to build the confidence to overcome the deep distrust that does exist on all sides”, Kerry said. “And it is the failure of politics, of all of us”, O’Brien said.
Speaking at a joint news conference, Mr Kerry said: “We don’t want to have a deal for the sake of the deal”.
USA refusal to become a direct participant in the civil war, even as it escalates its air attacks against the Islamic State and says it will target the Front, has become increasingly hard to implement on the ground as the once-separate battlefields have edged closer together and multiple forces are fighting with different agendas. Last week, the USA had to call for Russian help when Syrian warplanes struck an area not far from where US troops were operating.
Different from the United States, Russia is coordinating the actions by its air force against the terrorist groups with the Syrian Government.
The meeting marked yet another attempt to find common ground on easing a conflict that has killed at least more than 250,000 people and spurred millions of Syrians to seek refuge in Europe.
Meanwhile, in a blow to the opposition, rebel forces and civilians in the besieged Damascus suburb of Daraya were to be evacuated on Friday after agreeing to surrender the town late Thursday after four years of grueling bombardment and a crippling siege that left the sprawling area in ruins.
President Assad’s future is not part of the current talks. “The Obama administration correctly perceives this as the last best chance to ease the killing during this administration and are therefore willing to swallow a bitter pill and get more on-board with the Russian initiative than they would have liked to in an ideal world”.
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Russian Federation has said that it can not agree until the United States and its coalition partners are able to sufficiently separate the rebel groups it backs from the terrorist fighters in areas where they overlap.
