Kerry hopes to salvage frayed Syrian peace
American diplomats are scrambling to secure a new cease-fire agreement in Syria this week, following days of fighting that fractured a two-month truce.
“Literally thousands of lives have been saved” because of the temporary halt in violence since February, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday.
{mosads}But in recent weeks, that stability has begun to fray, resulting in rising bloodshed that threatens to return the chaos-ridden country to the darkest days of its five-year-old civil war.
In particular, Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city, is “in danger of spiraling out of control,” warned Kerry, fresh off a trip to Geneva to hammer out the terms of a potential new peace deal.
“There is no solution to this other than at the negotiating table,” he said. “Our teams are engaged in these conversations so that we can to establish a more sustainable mechanism than what was put in place previously.”
Aleppo has been battered by the violence in Syria, even as other areas of the country have entered a relative calm following the February cease-fire brokered by the U.S. and Russia, Kerry said on Tuesday. The city was not included in smaller, temporary peace deals struck in recent days.
Hundreds of people have been killed in Aleppo over the past weeks, which have seen multiple attacks on hospitals, medical clinics and other civilian areas.
“There is no justification for this horrific violence,” Kerry said on Tuesday.
The Obama administration has repeatedly argued that embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad must leave office before peace can be achieved. But Assad has stood fast in his post, bolstered by the aid of Russian military forces.
The sprawling war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, forced millions out of their homes and left a vacuum that has allowed for the growth of extremist groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
United Nations special envoy Staffan de Mistura has decamped to Moscow this week to meet with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in the hopes of coming up with terms of a new peace agreement.
Aleppo remains divided between the opposition and Assad’s government, turning it into a deadly battlefield.
“The line that we’re trying to draw now would prohibit any kind of incursion into Aleppo. It will not allow Aleppo to fall,” Kerry said on Tuesday.
“If Assad’s strategy is to somehow think he’s going to carve out Aleppo and carve out a section of the country, I’ve got news for you and for him: This war doesn’t end,” he added.
“It is simply physically impossible for Assad to just carve out an area and just pretend that he’s going to make it safe while the underlying issues are unresolved.”