If the truce holds from Monday, Russia and the United States will begin seven days of preparatory work to set up a “joint implementation centre”, including some information sharing to delineate territory controlled by Nusra and opposition groups.
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“Today, Sergei Lavrov and I, on behalf of our presidents and our countries, call on every Syrian stakeholder to support the plan that the United States and Russian Federation have reached, to. bring this catastrophic conflict to the quickest possible end through a political process”, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told a news conference after marathon talks in the Swiss city.
He said: “We will jointly agree on strikes against terrorists to be carried out by the Russian and American air forces”.
The deal would include steps that would stop the Syrian regime from flying combat missions where opposition forces are operating, Kerry said, adding that the two countries are calling on the opposition and regime to recommit to the cease-fire on September 12. Then, the US and Russian Federation would begin intelligence sharing and targeting coordination, while Assad’s air and ground forces would no longer be permitted to target Nusra any longer; they would be restricted to operations against the Islamic State.
Senior State Department officials briefing reporters on Kerry’s flight played down the prospect of a final breakthrough with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday, although they said “steady progress” had been made in recent weeks.
The deal is the culmination months of frenetic diplomacy that included four meetings between Kerry and Lavrov since August 26, and a lengthy face-to-face in China between Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin.
“It is vital that real change is felt on the ground by the Syrian people”. They provided no details on how they would deal with violations.
The ceasefire begins at sundown Monday, Kerry said, coinciding with the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.
“If implemented, the arrangement negotiated by Secretary Kerry could achieve a sustained cessation of hostilities, help ease the suffering of the Syrian people and address the immediate humanitarian catastrophe in Aleppo”, the Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said.
A second US official said that while Kerry would try to make progress, “patience is not infinite” and the United States would not simply keep talking if a conclusion was not reached “relatively soon”. He called the deal a potential “turning point” in a conflict that has killed as many as 500,000 people, if complied with by Syria’s Russian-backed government and US -supported rebel groups. It is profoundly in the interests of the United States to target al-Qaeda, to target al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria which is Nusra. Putin appeared to approve of the deal in concept – which set aside the question of Assad’s future.
The civil war in Syria, which has its roots in 2011’s Arab Spring, has pitted the long-standing Assad regime and its supporters in Russian Federation and Iran against an assortment of secular and Islamist groups – prone to frequent infighting – backed by Sunni and Western countries. Russian Federation has continued to call on the United States to separate the opposition forces it supports from militant groups.
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The track record for previous Syrian agreements is not good.
