Kerry Supports Syrian Peace Talks in Russia
GENEVA — Secretary of State John Kerry voiced support for Russia’s attempt to convene peace talks in Moscow between representatives of the Syrian government and the opposition, even though some leading opposition figures have said they do not plan to attend.
“We hope that the Russian efforts could be helpful,” Mr. Kerry said on Wednesday at the start of a meeting here with Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy for the crisis in Syria.
Mr. Kerry also praised Mr. de Mistura’s attempt to broker local cease-fires in Syria, starting with the contested city of Aleppo, saying he hoped it could “have effect.”
Mr. Kerry’s support for the Russian and United Nations initiatives comes as the American-led push to negotiate a solution to the bloody Syria conflict, the so-called Geneva process, has faltered. The United States has not withdrawn its public insistence that no enduring political settlement is possible as long as President Bashar al-Assad is in power. Nevertheless, Mr. de Mistura’s step-by-step strategy to de-escalate the civil war is attracting growing interest among some Obama administration officials.
Mr. Kerry said before the failed peace talks in Geneva last year that the United States’ goal was a transitional government in Syria that did not include Mr. Assad. But he refrained from making such an explicit demand on Wednesday, urging instead that Syria’s leaders rethink their course.
“It is time for President Assad, the Assad regime, to put their people first and to think about the consequences of their actions, which are attracting more and more terrorists to Syria, basically because of their efforts to remove Assad,” Mr. Kerry said.
Russia, which has backed the Syrian government politically and by sending arms, is planning to convene talks among the warring Syrian factions on Jan. 26 in Moscow.
There has been speculation that Mr. de Mistura’s efforts and the Russian initiative could be combined to start a new peace process, or at least to diminish some of the fighting in a conflict that has already killed more than 200,000 people and displaced nearly half the population.
Several leading figures among the more moderate of Mr. Assad’s foes have suggested that they do not believe Russia can be an impartial arbiter, and have refused to join the talks in Moscow.
“We don’t have the conditions for the success of this meeting,” Moaz al-Khatib, a cleric from Damascus who left Syria after the uprising began and, unlike many others who have spent decades in exile, has some influence among the rebel fighters inside Syria, said recently.
Leaders of the exile opposition coalition that the United States has recognized as the legitimate representative of Syria have also said they will not go.
An American official said the United States had told the Syrian opposition that it had little to lose by attending the Moscow meeting. But the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said that the United States was not coordinating with Russia and was not pressing Syrian opposition officials to attend.
Emile Hokayem, a Middle East-based analyst who has called for more military support for the opposition, said that Mr. Kerry’s remarks suggested a weakness in the United States’ policy: With little to show for its own efforts, he said, it is ceding the initiative to Russia, a putative rival in the conflict.
“The U.S. has no irons in the fire,” Mr. Hokayem said. “It basically wants to maintain the illusion of involvement, while maintaining the reality of disentanglement and distance from this whole nightmare.”
Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said Wednesday that Syrian opposition leaders would lose influence if they skipped the Moscow meeting.
“Those who decide not to take part in this event, they will lose in terms of their positions in the peace talks process as a whole,” Mr. Lavrov told a news conference in Moscow.
Mr. de Mistura, who is planning to travel to Damascus next week, said Wednesday in Geneva that he appreciated Mr. Kerry’s support. He said he wanted to find a way to stop the fighting in Aleppo that could become a model for cease-fires elsewhere and eventually lead to a political solution.
“I will continue, I can tell you, pushing for Aleppo, because Aleppo has become an iconic example of where things could start sending the best signal,” Mr. de Mistura said. “In other words, that bombing, shelling, barrel bombing, mortar shelling would stop, and bring some humanitarian aid, which means giving some hope to the Syrian people.”
“You know very well — we have been hearing it from Iran — the Syrian people are just saying, ‘Enough,’ ” he added.
After his meeting with Mr. de Mistura, Mr. Kerry met with the foreign minister of Iran, Mohammad Javad Zarif, at a luxury hotel here. Mr. Kerry’s objective was to encourage progress in the next round of negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, which are scheduled to resume in Geneva on Thursday.
“I think it’s important,” Mr. Zarif told reporters before Mr. Kerry arrived for their meeting. “I think it will show the readiness of the two parties to move forward, to speed up the process.”
The talks on limiting Iran’s nuclear program have been extended twice; a deadline for showing progress is nearing. Iran and six world powers, including the United States, agreed last year that an accord outlining the main parts of an agreement would be finished by March 1, and the full agreement by July.
THE NEW YORK TIMES