The US secretary of state, John Kerry, who arrived in Germany on Wednesday, had talks planned late in the evening with the United Nations peace envoy Staffan de Mistura and Adel al-Jubeir, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, a key backer of Syria’s rebel groups. The Kurds are being backed in this endeavour by Russian airstrikes.
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Western media reports said the proposal called for a March 1 cease-fire.
Detailing the dire conditions, Kerry declared, “Russia needs to join with all of us in understanding that this can not go on”.
Rebel groups have been urging U.S. President Barack Obama to do more to stop Russian bombing raids that have left them on the verge of collapse ahead of the talks.
Neither Kerry nor Lavrov, who met hours before the larger meeting began, would predict whether an agreement was possible.
“Before we go on February 25 those measures should be implemented in reality on the land”, said Riad Hijab, chief coordinator of the High Negotiations Committee opposition umbrella group. “That is what we will talk about in Munich”.
Russian Federation said Thursday it was ready to discuss the possibility of a ceasefire in Syria as foreign ministers gathered in Munich in a bid to restart peace talks. That task force will include members of the military along with representatives from countries that are supporting various armed groups in Syria.
Officials had previously said there are 2.5 million Syrians registered in Turkey.
“Azaz district has seen some of the heaviest tolls of this brutal war, and yet again we are seeing health care under siege”, said Muskilda Zancada, the head of MSF’s Syria mission. The conflict has killed more than a quarter-million people, created Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since World War II and allowed the Islamic State to carve out its own territory across parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq.
At NATO headquarters in Brussels, Carter tried to drum up support for accelerating the fight against the militants. New Zealand and Spain requested the meeting.
In a speech at France’s lower house of parliament on Wednesday, Laurent Fabius also said there was “a complicity of Russian Federation and Iran”.
Opposition activists say Turkey has shelled positions held by the main Kurdish militia in northern Syria for a second day Sunday.
The Russian Air Force has performed over 500 sorties, eliminating almost 1,900 terrorist facilities in Syria between February 4 and February 11.
“For us, it’s important to stop the Russian aggression on the Syrian people”, said Salem Meslet, a Syrian opposition representative. ISIS, however, has long since passed the rebels as a dominant opposition force.
He called on the United Nations to do more to prevent what he said was “ethnic cleansing” in the country, accusing it of insincerity in calling on Turkey to do more to help Syrian refugees instead of taking action to prevent the bloodshed in Syria.
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Kurdish forces backed by Arab rebel groups captured a strategic air base and the adjacent town in northern Syria from rival anti-government factions overnight, a monitoring group said early Thursday.
