US Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during a press conference following a meeting with foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on August 3, 2015 in Doha.
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“We have continued our efforts to reduce the areas where we lack understanding and trust”, Lavrov said.
Kerry said “we achieved clarity on the path forward” for a revamped cessation of hostilities, adding that the “vast majority” of technical obstacles to a cease-fire were cleared but some issues remained unresolved.
“In fact, today our American partners for the first time gave us a list of rebel organizations who joined the cessation of hostilities after the USA mediation”, Lavrov further said.
The U.S. and Russian Federation said they made progress toward a new cease-fire in Syria’s civil war but had no breakthroughs after nine hours of talks in Geneva, underscoring the deep differences that remain in bringing a lasting settlement to the country’s bloody conflict.
Russian Federation is the main external supporter of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Turkish-backed rebel fighters have seized the Syrian border town of Jarabulus from Islamic State (IS) group militants.
Russian Federation last week gave its blessing to a long-demanded 48-hour pause in fighting in the city to allow in aid, but de Mistura on Thursday accused other unspecified parties of dragging their feet. After missing an initial target date of Aug. 1, de Mistura had hoped to restart the intra-Syrian discussions toward political transition in late August.
“As we have all seen now, violations eventually became the norm rather than the exception”, Kerry told reporters.
“A terrorist center” remains in those areas of Syria and “no one can deal with it because so-called moderate opposition groups are there”, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in an interview the day before the talks.
Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special envoy for Syria, stopped in during the meetings. For their part, USA officials say they are willing to press rebels groups they support harder on separating themselves from the Islamic State and al-Nusra, which despite a recent name change is still viewed as al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria.
The talks came as opposition groups effectively surrendered the Damascus suburb of Daraya to the government after a grueling four-year siege.
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“I think there’s a shift in the balance of intellectual opinion in the administration, toward postponing “Assad must go” in the name of providing humanitarian assistance to save lives”, Kupchan said.
