DEVELOPMENTS
— In his first response to Israel’s weekend airstrikes, President Bashar Assad said Tuesday that Syria is capable of facing Israel but stopped short of threatening retaliation for the strikes near the Syrian capital of Damascus.
— Four U.N. soldiers patrolling part of the disputed Golan Heights area between Syria and Israel were detained by Syrian insurgents Tuesday, the second time in two months that members of the blue-helmeted international peacekeeping force in that region have become entangled in Syria’s civil war.
— In Geneva, U.N. relief agency officials said the number of displaced Syrians inside the country had more than doubled in the past two months, to 4.25 million, and that roughly 1 in 3 Syrians, or about 6.8 million, needed urgent assistance — half of them children.
— Wire services
The United States and Russia pledged Tuesday to set aside more than two years of differences over Syria’s civil war, saying they’d convene an international conference later this month to try to corral President Bashar Assad’s regime and the rebels into talks on a political transition.
Yet even as leaders from both countries hailed their joint strategy as proof of enhanced U.S.-Russian cooperation, it was unclear how their plan might now prove effective in ending a war that has become even more dangerous in recent months with accusations the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, Israeli airstrikes on weapons convoys and American threats to begin arming the rebels.
The outcome of more than five hours of meetings in Moscow involving Secretary of State John Kerry of the United States and President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia essentially bring diplomatic efforts to halt Syria’s violence to a point they were about a year ago. The former Cold War foes, who’ve split bitterly over how to halt the conflict, said they’d work to revive a transition plan they laid out in June 2012, yet never gained momentum with Syria’s government or the opposition. They said this time they were committed to bringing the Syrian government and rebels to the negotiating table.
Speaking about the U.S. strategy, Kerry suggested the Obama administration would consider holding off on any possible plan to provide weapons to vetted units of the Syrian opposition if a peace strategy takes hold in the coming weeks.
That appeared to be a minor concession to Russia, which has argued vehemently against any foreign governments providing military assistance for fear it would aid extremists. Kerry also appeared to back down from the outright U.S. demand that Assad step down in the transition, while maintaining that he, personally, couldn’t see how a leader responsible for such widespread abuses could remain in power as part of a peace deal. More than 70,000 people have died in the conflict since March 2011, according to the United Nations.
Kerry said the international plan for a transition agreed to last year in Geneva must not be a “piece of paper,” but rather “the road map” for peace.
The Geneva plan allowed each side to veto candidates it found unacceptable for an interim government. The plan never got off the ground, though Washington and Moscow differ over the reasons.
Speaking to reporters at a government guesthouse in Moscow, Lavrov praised the Assad regime for expressing its willingness to work on a political transition and its decision to establish a dialogue with all Syrians. He said the opposition, by contrast, “hasn’t said a single word yet which would show their commitment.”
“When we hear the right words from the opposition, given the fact that the regime has already voiced the right words, then we will try to convert such words into actions,” Lavrov said.
Kerry took a different view.
He said the alternative to the political transition strategy was more violence, a Syria that “heads increasingly toward an abyss, a worse humanitarian crisis and possibly even ethnic cleansing and the breakup of the Syrian state. He said the opposition supports the peace plan and the transition strategy and that it was up to the government to make good on its obligations, also as they pertain to not using chemical weapons.
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