Addressing the United Nations meeting, Mr Hammond said: “Sadly it is far too soon for any of us to predict an end to the Syria conflct”. He called Friday’s agreement “a milestone”.
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Still, the resolution, adopted with a 15-0 vote, gives the Security Council’s imprimatur to a possible political solution for the first time.
It also calls for a transitional government within six months and elections within 18 months. “Without peace talks, the cease-fire can not be sustained”.
Speaking during the Security Council meeting, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the resolution puts the future of Syria in the hands of its people.
Western countries have called for his departure, but Russian Federation and China say he should not be required to leave power as a precondition for peace talks.
According to the resolution, talks between the Syrian government and the opposition are set to start in January 2016.
Missing from the talks so far has been the man at the centre of the storm: Assad, whose barrel bombs, chemical weapons and vicious tactics have so embittered a huge segment of his own population that his critics insist he can no longer rule the country.
The US and Russian initiative, which emerged from talks with a 17-nation group, foresees a rapid ceasefire in the nearly five-year-old conflict, perhaps as early as next month.
The Security Council met Friday after the latest round of talks by the International Syria Support Group, which gathered in NY to renew its push for peace.
Khoja made the comments to the French news agency AFP.
Another member of the Istanbul-based coalition, Samir al-Nashar, called the resolution “unrealistic and hard to implement”.
On Friday, Kerry expressed optimism that the plan would move along swiftly.
“This council is sending a clear message to all concerned that the time is now to stop the killing in Syria and lay the groundwork for a government that the long-suffering people of that battered land can support”, US Secretary of State John Kerry told the council after the vote.
“We are under no illusions about the obstacles that exist”, Mr Kerry said.
Kerry said that most ISSG members agreed that Assad would have to go, and many said so, notably France.
“Here is affirmation of the fundamental principles of the political settlement, namely that Syria should remain unified, secular, pluri-religious and pluri-ethnic, comfortable and safe for all groups of its people and only the Syrian people themselves can define its future”, said Lavrov. “The people of Syria have suffered enough”.
Davutoglu said Turkey will continue its efforts to find a political transition in Syria in line with the Geneva Communique on Syria of 2012.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said he presented lists submitted from each country of groups they consider terrorist organizations.
The resolution, which comes at a summit of 17 foreign ministers in NY, rubber-stamps a plan agreed on in Vienna last month that would lead to the establishment of a transitional government in Syria within six months and new elections within 18 months.
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More than half of Syria’s entire prewar population has been uprooted by the war – families that either have fled overseas as refugees or are displaced internally, driven from their homes by violence.
