U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is holding a series of meetings in Munich, with officials including Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
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“This is a pause that is dependent on the process going forward”, Kerry said.
Who is there and what are they discussing?
The ISSG is the International Syria Support Group, a collection of about 20 countries with interests in the conflict, that was due to meet later Thursday in Munich.
Although the agreement itself was not presented as a cease-fire, the countries agreed in the joint statement to establish a “cease-fire task force” led by the United Nations and co-chaired by Russian Federation and the U.S.
He acknowledged that differences remain over the future of Syrian President Bashar Assad but said “you have to be at the table to deal with that”.
Russian bombing had allowed Syrian troops supported by Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias to reach nearly 25 km from the Turkish border, the closest they have come in more than two-and-a-half years. NPR’s Alison Meuse has reported that the fighting in Aleppo contributed to the suspension of a previous round of talks earlier this month.
“This is still a complicated conflict, with increasing levels of violence, increasing numbers of terrorists”.
Following a marathon meeting in Munich aimed at resurrecting peace talks that collapsed last week, the powers, including the United States, Russia and more than a dozen other nations, reaffirmed their commitment to a political transition when conditions on the ground improved.
But the panel’s top Democrat echoed some of the frustration of his Republican colleagues with the larger US strategy.
A Western diplomat told Reuters that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry wanted an immediate ceasefire in Syria – “All or nothing”.
With the Syrian opposition saying it can not accept a truce because it does not trust the Russians, diplomats saw little chance of progress.
“While it has been dealing with this issue alone, the countries that have not made any contribution are displaying attitudes like “Turkey must open its borders”, he added.
Russian Federation has proposed a March 1 cease-fire.
And when a reporter asked Lavrov to respond to accusations that Russian Federation had been bombing civilian targets in a major offensive to help the regime retake Aleppo, Lavrov insisted that such claims were “purely propaganda”.
“We have agreed to accelerate and expand the delivery of humanitarian aid beginning immediately”, Mr Kerry said. Brett McGurk said that Moscow’s airstrikes forced rebel fighters – who had been battling ISIS further east – to go to Aleppo instead, giving ISIS time to continue its onslaught while killing off some of its enemies in the process.
Senior opposition leader Murad Abu-Ibrahim Al-Taweel from the Syrian town of Azaz told Anadolu that the Kurdish units “exploited the involvement of the opposition in the battles with the regime and attacked its strategic bases near Azaz and controlled” a number of villages and towns.
What happens if these talks fail?
The war in Syria has already killed a quarter of a million people, and that stands to rise if this falls through.
The U.N. human rights chief has described the worsening situation around Aleppo as “grotesque”, and has warned that up to 300,000 people are at risk of being besieged.
Dramatizing the high-stakes nature of the Munich talks, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev argued that a full-scale ground operation in Syria could widen the conflict. It would be impossible to win such a war quickly, he said according to a German translation of his words, “especially in the Arab world, where everybody is fighting against everybody”.
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Talk of a world war is extreme.
