Kerry Says ’ US Must
Negotiate With Assad To End Syria Conflict
:
By AFP
March 15, 2015 "ICH"
- The United States will have to negotiate
with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to end
the civil war now entering its fifth year,
US Secretary of State John Kerry told CBS
News in an interview that aired Sunday.
Washington has long insisted that Assad must
be replaced through a negotiated, political
transition, but the rise of a common enemy,
the hard-line militant group Islamic State
(IS), appears to have slightly softened the
West’s stance towards him.
In the interview, Kerry did not repeat the
standard US line that Assad had lost all
legitimacy and had to go. More than 215,000
Syrians have been killed and millions have
been displaced by the conflict.
"We have to negotiate in the end. We've
always been willing to negotiate in the
context of the Geneva I process," Kerry
said, referring to a 2012 conference which
called for a negotiated transition to end
the war.
He stressed that Washington, and other
countries he did not name, were working hard
to "re-ignite" efforts to find a political
solution.
The US helped lead international efforts to
kick-start peace talks between Assad and a
splintered Syrian opposition, bringing the
two sides together in Geneva for the first
time early last year.
But after two rounds of talks, the
negotiations collapsed in bitter acrimony
and no fresh negotiations have been
scheduled, while the scale of the killing
and devastation has mounted.
"Assad didn't want to negotiate," Kerry told
CBS television, adding, “To get the Assad
regime to negotiate, we’re going to have to
make it clear to him that there is a
determination by everybody to seek that
political outcome and change his calculation
about negotiating,” he said.
“That’s under way right now. And I am
convinced that, with the efforts of our
allies and others, there will be increased
pressure on Assad.”
One of the ‘worst tragedies on the face of
the planet’
Syria sank into civil war after a peaceful
street uprising against four decades of
Assad family rule began in March 2011. The
revolt spiraled into an armed insurgency,
which has deepened with the rise of the IS
group and other hardliners.
"This is one of the worst tragedies any of
us have seen on the face of the planet,"
Kerry said during the interview, recorded at
the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Assad seems more likely to survive the
Syrian crisis than at any point since it
began, not the least because Iran’s support
for Assad is as solid as ever, with Russia
showing no sign of abandoning him.
US-led forces started air strikes against
the IS group in Syria and Iraq in the
summer. Washington has said the campaign in
Syria is not coordinated with the Syrian
military, which also views the group as its
enemy.
Assad appears to be betting that the US-led
campaign against the IS group will force
Washington to engage with him.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, REUTERS)