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25Jul13

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There is no military solution to Syrian crisis: Kerry

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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said here Thursday that there was no military solution in Syria, only a political one was possible, and he was stepping up dialogue with all involved in the Syrian conflict that has claimed over 100,000 lives over the past two years.

Kerry made the statement here as he was speaking to reporters here after his meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Kerry came to UN Headquarters in New York for the first time as U.S. secretary of states to preside over a ministerial level meeting on the Great Lakes region of Africa in the UN Security Council. The United States is president of the 15-nation council for the month of July.

Kerry and the UN secretary-general met later with reporters together to describe their discussion.

"There is no military solution to Syria. There is only a political solution, and that will require leadership in order to bring people to the table," he said, adding that he spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday.

"We remain committed to the effort to bring the parties to a Geneva 2 (conference on Syria) to implement Geneva 1, and we will try our hardest to make that happen as soon as is possible," Kerry said.

For his part, Ban said "Military and violent actions must be stopped by all the parties and it is thus imperative to have a peace conference in Geneva as soon as possible, as initiated by Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lavrov," adding that he and Joint Special Representative Lakhdar Brahimi would spare no effort to convene this meeting as soon as possible.

In May, following talks in Moscow between Lavrov and Kerry, the two countries announced they would work together to achieve a political solution to the Syria crisis, and agreed to convene an international conference aimed at achieving this goal.

However, a date for the conference has not yet been set and talks are continuing on the best time for it to be held, who should participate, how it should be structured and some of the questions to be discussed.

[Source: Xinhua, United Nations, NY, 25Jul13]

Syria War

This document has been published on 26Jul13 by the Equipo Nizkor and Derechos Human Rights. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.