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30Oct15

Agreement Reached to Restart Syria Peace Talks and Seek Cease-Fire

Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that a group of nations with opposing stakes in the Syrian war had agreed to "explore the modalities of a nationwide cease-fire" and had asked the United Nations to oversee the rewriting of the country's constitution and then new elections.

The announcement, which Mr. Kerry made with his Russian counterpart and adversary in the broadening war in Syria, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, represented the first time all the major outside participants in a conflict now in its fifth year had agreed on the start of a political process to bring it to an end.

But what they described after seven hours of heated negotiations here, marked by a sharp exchanges between the foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia, amounted to more of an aspiration than a negotiation.

There was no target date or deadline for either the cease-fire or a new constitution and election that would follow. It remains unclear whether President Bashar al-Assad of Syria — who was not invited to the meeting — or the rebels who have been seeking to overthrow him will agree.

But there was agreement to meet in two weeks to put more specifics into the basic principles they issued Friday night, which included a commitment to keep Syria together as a single nation — just at a moment it seems headed toward splintering.

Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lavrov said they remained deeply divided on the question of whether Mr. Assad must go in any final settlement, as the United States and its main allies, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states, have all demanded. "We have no agreement on the destiny of Assad," Mr. Lavrov told reporters as he sat next to Mr. Kerry. "Russia believes that it is up to Syrian people to decide within the framework of the political process."

But both men said the cease-fire would not apply to the conflict with the Islamic State forces that have now commandeered parts of Syria. And while Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lavrov spoke only hours after the White House announced the insertion of roughly 50 Special Forces into Syrian territory to help train rebel groups and target attacks on the Islamic State forces, the two men said they had spoken about some kind of coordination in their attacks that goes beyond the narrow "deconfliction" conversations that are designed to keep American and Russian forces from inadvertently clashing.

"We have some ideas which we discussed today that I am taking back to Washington" about cooperative approaches, Mr. Kerry said about his discussion with Mr. Lavrov. He added that "they would need the president's approval," but that he was "confident the president wants to make certain that we are maximizing our effort against the terrorists as well as maximizing our effort to bring peace through a political track."

Notably, Mr. Lavrov declined to criticize, at least publicly, President Obama's decision on the Special Forces and took issue with the suggestion that it risked setting the conditions for a Cold War-like proxy war between Russian and American forces. Mr. Kerry insisted that while the decision to put forces on the ground had been discussed for some time, "It's really a coincidence that it came out today."

He told reporters that he was not aware a decision had been made until earlier on Friday, when he began convening the diplomatic meeting in the Imperial Hotel.

For Mr. Kerry, getting a diplomatic process going to end the Syrian war has become something of a negotiating obsession, much as reaching the nuclear accord with Iran — which came to fruition here in Vienna three months ago, with talks taking place in some of the same hotel rooms.

While the initial progress on Syria was slim, many of the diplomats who were involved said that it amounted to more than they thought possible even a few weeks ago. "This meeting was definitely not an easy one," said Federica Mogherini, the European Union's top foreign policy official, "but for sure a historic one as we had, for the first time, all the actors around the table and I would say a very constructive atmosphere."

Still, the tensions in the room underscored how difficult it could be to reach a common understanding. The participants lined up, broadly speaking, into two groups: A Russian- and Iranian-led group that has been supporting Mr. Assad and his Alawite minority government, and an American- and Saudi-led group, including the Gulf states, that has insisted any process must end up with the Syrian leader gone from the country.

The most heated conversations took place between Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, and his Saudi counterpart, Adel al-Jubeir. Both are American educated - Mr. Zarif at the University of Denver, Mr. Jubeir at Georgetown University - and both have deep connections with the American government. But until a few days ago the Saudis were refusing to sit in the same room with the Iranians, and they spent much of the meeting, one official said, "voicing grievances and accusations," which Mr. Kerry had to try to get past in order to win agreement on basic principles.

That was also how Mr. Kerry began the process with Iran — and with Mr. Zarif — in the Iran negotiations. That accord was two and a half years in the making, and required Mr. Zarif to overcome major objections from Iran's military and hard-liners who opposed giving up, for 15 years or more, much of the nuclear infrastructure they had spent years developing.

Winning over that same group in the case of Syria may be even harder. Mr. Assad has been Iran's ally and proxy for years. Mr. Zarif made clear on Friday that the Iranians would not sign on to a process to remove him.

Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, who was sitting next to Mr. Kerry in the talks, said, "As far as we are concerned, we think that Bashar al-Assad has no place in the future of Syria." Mr. Fabius also said, however, "Other people, other countries think differently, particularly Iran."

Moreover, the struggle over Syria has become part of the larger struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia for influence in the Middle East. And it has become part of the new narrative of renewed competition between the United States and Russia, an extension of the conflicting goals that began with the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in Ukraine.

Still, Mr. Lavrov's words on Friday, if taken at face value, suggested that Russia also wanted to see a cease-fire, and a political process in which either Mr. Assad or his allies in Syria's Alawite sect could prevail.

Mr. Assad won re-election last year, in a vote that almost no one considered credible. Mr. Kerry and Staffan de Mistura, the Swedish-Italian diplomat who is the United Nations special envoy for the Syria crisis, said any new election would be closely monitored by the United Nations, would be held under a different constitution, and would include Syrians who had fled the country.

Mr. Kerry, trying to coax along his fellow foreign ministers, said at the end of the day that "we came here — the foreign ministers who came here today — with the conviction that the fighting and the killing absolutely has to end. And it's up to us to find a way to do that."

But, with Mr. Lavrov sitting next to him, he added a few moments later that the answer to the Syrian civil war is "not found in a military alliance with Assad from our point of view."

[Source: By David E. Sanger, The New York Times, Vienna, 30Oct15]
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Syria War
small logoThis document has been published on 16Nov15 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.