State Dep’t: Kerry Didn’t Say US Would Sit Down With Assad
March 15, 2015 - 8:13 PM
By Patrick Goodenough
(CNSNews.com) – The State Department scrambled Sunday to give assurances that comments by Secretary of State John Kerry did not indicate a shift in the administration’s view of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his future.
Remarks in a CBS News interview in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt were interpreted by some as signaling a softening of the long expressed stance that, given regime abuses, the huge death toll and humanitarian suffering resulting from the Syrian civil war, there can be no future role for Assad.
Reiterating the view that the conflict can only end with a political solution, Kerry spoke of efforts to “re-ignite a diplomatic outcome.”
“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.”
[video:1]
“And you’d be willing to negotiate with him?” CBS News’ Margaret Brennan asked.
“Well, we have to negotiate in the end,” he replied.
Although Kerry did not say specifically that the U.S. would sit across the table from Assad, the wording of his response to that question, and the previous comment about changing “his” – that is, Assad’s – calculation about the need to negotiate, were read as saying as much, judging from media coverage and social media reaction.
“Kerry just said he’d negotiate with Assad,” “Kerry would be willing to talk with Syria’s Assad,” “Kerry: U.S. must eventually negotiate with Assad,” and “Kerry concedes U.S. must talk to Assad to end Syria conflict,” ran some news headlines – the latter one in a report by the television channel of Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist group closely allied to Assad and to Iran.
Kerry spokeswoman Marie Harf, traveling with the secretary, used her Twitter feed to counter that interpretation.
She said Kerry had merely “repeated long-standing policy that we need negotiated process w/regime at table - did not say we wld negotiate directly w/Assad.”
“Policy remains same & is clear: there’s no future for Assad in Syria & we say so all the time ...” she tweeted.
Harf drew attention to a March 12 statement by U.S. special envoy for Syria Daniel Rubinstein, in which he said that “Assad’s desperation to cling to power through daily terror reminds us all that he has long lost legitimacy and he must give way for a real political transition.”
Stalled diplomatic effort
Kerry’s comments in Egypt came hours before he headed to Switzerland for the latest round of talks with his Iranian counterpart ahead of an end-March deadline for a deal on its nuclear program.
As Assad’s closest ally, Iran would welcome any shift in the U.S. stance on the Syrian dictator’s future. The administration has stressed repeatedly that the nuclear talks are separate from any other aspect of the U.S. relationship with Iran. It has also ruled out making concessions relating to Iran’s role in the region, despite recognition that the U.S., Iran and Assad share a common enemy in the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
More than three years after President Obama first publicly called on Assad to “step aside,” the growing reach and successes of ISIS have led some security analysts to conclude that the jihadists pose a greater threat to regional stability than the dictator does. The point is frequently hammered home by Assad’s allies in Moscow and Tehran.
Proponents of that argument have pointed to developments in Egypt and Libya, where the toppling of Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 paved the way in the former for growing instability and a Muslim Brotherhood government – itself ousted by the military after a year – and continuing chaos and terrorism in the latter.
“None of us – Russia, the United States, coalition, and regional states – wants to see a collapse of the government and political institutions in Damascus,” CIA Director John Brennan said at a Council on Foreign Relations event on Friday.
[video:2]
He warned that “extremist elements” in Syria were on the ascendant in some places, he said “the last thing we want to do is allow them to march into Damascus.”
“That’s why it’s important to bolster those forces within the Syrian opposition that are not extremists.”
Declared U.S. policy is to train and support “moderate” rebels in Syria as part of a strategy to defeat ISIS elements there, in conjunction with complementary support for Iraqi forces battling the group, and with airstrikes targeting ISIS in both countries.
How that support for the Syrian rebels will aid their fight against the Assad regime, however, is the subject of debate. Administration officials allow that it should make the rebels better prepared to defend themselves against the regime’s forces, but also stress that there is no military solution to the civil war.
When he first laid out his anti-ISIS strategy last September, Obama drew a distinction between pursuing a military response to ISIS, and a “political solution” to the Syrian civil war.
The diplomatic effort to end the civil war has focused on what is called the Geneva process. Talks in the Swiss city led in June 2012 to an agreement on negotiating an end to the conflict, based on the establishment of a transitional governing body on the basis of “mutual consent” between regime and rebel representatives.
But conspicuously absent in that agreement, dubbed “Geneva I,” was any reference to Assad’s future. The U.S. said afterwards that it was self-evident the opposition would never agree to a future role for Assad, but Russia rejects that view.
Further talks, “Geneva II,” were held in early 2014, but failed to break the deadlock. In late January Russia hosted talks aimed at reviving the stalled initiative, but the main Western-backed opposition coalition refused to take part.
Source URL:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/state-dep-t-kerry-didn-t-say-us-would-sit-down-assad
