“Today, Sergei Lavrov and I, on behalf of our presidents and our countries, call on every Syrian stakeholder to support the plan that the US and Russian Federation have reached, to. bring this catastrophic conflict to the quickest possible end through a political process”, US Secretary of State John Kerry told a news conference after marathon talks in the Swiss city. Officials had suggested Kerry wouldn’t travel to Geneva unless a deal was clearly at hand.
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US Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking after more than 12 hours of consultations with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, said the deal could provide a “turning point” in the conflict if the parties implement it “in good faith”.
A deal hinges on an unlikely U.S.
Kerry told reporters that “bedrock” of the agreement, is Russia’s ensuring that Assad’s air force will no longer fly combat missions over opposition and civilian areas. Washington must persuade “moderate” rebels to break ranks with the Nusra Front, al Qaida’s Syria affiliate, and other extremist groups.
Once Syria’s commercial hub, Aleppo has been divided between al-Assad’s forces in the west and rebels to the east since fighting for control of the city erupted in mid-2012.
“The Obama administration, the U.S., is going the extra mile here because we believe that Russian Federation, and my colleague (Lavrov), have the ability to press the Assad regime to stop this conflict and to come to the table and make peace”, he said. Forty days of fighting in Aleppo has killed almost 700 civilians, including 160 children, according to a Syrian human rights group. Volunteer first responders said they pulled the bodies of nine people, including four children, from rubble following air raids on Friday on a rebel-held area.
The United State and Russian Federation on Friday agreed a plan to impose a ceasefire in the Syrian civil war and lay the foundation of a peace process, US Secretary of State John Kerry said. Aleppo will be a large part of the day’s discussions, they said, along with the technical details of a cease-fire, defining everything from how far back from demilitarized areas combatants would have to stay to the types of weapons they would need to withdraw from front lines. Kerry and Lavrov met four times since a previous Geneva meeting on August 26, and Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin discussed the matter at a summit in China. They’ve held a flurry of phone calls in recent days.
A truce agreed in February and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council has been repeatedly broken by both sides. For Kerry, securing a sustainable peace in Syria has become his biggest objective as America’s top diplomat since last summer’s Iran nuclear deal.
The agreement was reached after 10 months of attempts to halt the fighting and suspended efforts for a political settlement in a conflict that began more than five years ago, has left almost a half-million people dead and created the largest refugee crisis since World War II. Amid the chaos of fighting between Syria’s government and rebels, the Islamic State group has emerged as a global terror threat.
Russian Federation and the United States reached agreement early this morning on a new plan to reduce violence in the Syria conflict that, if successful, could lead for the first time to joint military targeting by the two powers against Islamic jihadis in Syria. “It is profoundly in the interests of the United States”.
Kerry’s offer includes intelligence sharing and joint targeting coordination.
Russian Federation and the United States on Friday announced a ceasefire plan for the “cessation of hostilities” between the Syrian government and opposition militia in the warn-torn country, BBC reported. The idea of such cooperation, however, has prompted significant skepticism from powerful members of the US national security establishment in Washington.
A previous ceasefire collapsed earlier in the year.
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U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper has been another vocal opponent of any enhanced U.S.
