“This council is sending a clear message to all concerned that the time is now to stop the killing in Syria and to lay the groundwork for a government that the long-suffering people of that battered land can support”, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said of the initiative. “It’s a launch pad…”
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However, the resolution doesn’t mention what role Syrian President Bashar Assad will play.
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Wearing handcuffs and beige T-shirt, Marquez appeared in federal court in Riverside, California for a brief hearing on Thursday. Apparently it was a marriage of convenience , and a sham in order to get the woman in question American citizenship.
“We are under no illusions about the obstacles that exist”.
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On the eve of United Nations talks, Assad warned in an interview with Dutch television that misguided efforts to bring about regime change would make the conflict “drag on”.
Airstrikes in Syria reportedly carried out by Russian warplanes killed at least 14 people on Friday, according to activists, while President Bashar Assad made a rare public appearance at a church in the capital, Damascus, attending preparations for Christmas Eve, his office said.
To convince Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others that it recognizes the broad opposition to Assad inside Syria, the Obama administration has quietly dropped its refusal to recognize the Islamist groups they back as legitimate actors in a negotiated solution. His successor Lakhdar Brahimi frequently beseeched the Council to do more and often apologised to the Syrian people for failing them. “The idea that he could once again stand for elections is unacceptable to us”.
Iran had repeatedly described the question of Assad as a “red line”.
The text, seen by Reuters, called for the U.N.to present the council with options for monitoring a ceasefire within one month of adoption of the resolution.
– Expresses support for a nationwide ceasefire in Syria “to come into effect as soon as the representatives of the Syrian government and the opposition have begun initial steps towards a political transition under United Nations auspices”.
The talks, in which Kerry said the US agreed on much with Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, focused “not on what can or can’t be done immediately about Assad”, but rather “on a process whereby Syrians will be making decision for the future of Syria”, he said.
It is hoped that if a cease-fire can be reached in Syria’s four-and-a-half-year-old civil war, then global efforts can prioritize defeating the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which controls sizable parts of eastern Syria and over the border in neighboring Iraq.
The council will meet in NY on Friday at 4pm (9pm GMT) and is expected to accept the text, which will set out a timetable for talks between the Syrian government and opposition, with a start date of early January.
Jordan’s foreign minister said he was compiling a list of terrorist groups in Syria that will be banned from the talks – along with the blacklisted ISIS and the Al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. He said some countries “sent 10, 15, 20 names” and others more.
Diplomats said the main problem in the negotiations on the resolution involved Russian and Iranian concerns about how to refer to a bloc of opposition groups that would join UN-led peace talks with the Syrian government.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius meanwhile demanded that talks on Syria’s future were held under the condition that Assad leave power.
Included in the Riyadh group were Islamist fighting groups such as Ahrar al-Sham, which the United States had previously indicated it considered extreme and would not support as part of the process. “Only ballots – not bullets – can ultimately usher in a new era in Syria”.
United Nations special envoy Staffan de Mistura said invitations to the peace talks among Syrian parties will go out in January, and Kerry estimated that talks would begin in the middle or end of January.
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Diplomats said that at previous rounds of Syria talks in Vienna, Zarif and his Saudi counterpart engaged in several heated exchanges about Syria.
