| New York Times | - |
BERLIN
- Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday that the Obama
administration has been considering new steps to increase support for
the Syrian opposition and hasten the departure of President Bashar al-Assad and that some of them would be ...
Kerry Vows Not to Leave Syria Rebels ‘Dangling in the Wind’
Hussein Malla/Associated Press
In a cave in Idlib Province,
Free Syrian Army fighters did a traditional dance and sang songs
critical of President Bashar al-Assad.
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ANNE BARNARD
Published: February 25, 2013
BERLIN — Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday that the Obama
administration has been considering new steps to increase support for
the Syrian opposition and hasten the departure of President Bashar al-Assad and that some of them would be decided at an international conference in Rome this week.
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“We are determined that the Syrian opposition is not going to be
dangling in the wind wondering where the support is or if it’s coming,”
Mr. Kerry said at a news conference in London. “And we are determined to
change the calculation on the ground for President Assad.”
Mr. Kerry’s comments came amid diplomatic maneuvering and an unusual
White House intervention over the Rome meeting, scheduled for Thursday.
After the Syrian opposition signaled that it would boycott the Rome
conference to protest what it sees as negligible help from Western
nations, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Mr. Kerry called Moaz
al-Khatib, the leader of the Syrian opposition coalition, and persuaded
him to attend.
American officials have said that their goal in supporting the Syrian
resistance is to build up its leverage in the hope that Mr. Assad will
agree to yield power and a political transition can be negotiated to end
the nearly two-year-old conflict.
In Moscow, however, Syria’s
foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, appeared to be making a competing
initiative. In a statement during a visit to Russia, which has been one
of the Assad government’s main backers, Mr. Moallem said that Syrian
authorities were “ready for a dialogue with anyone who’s willing, even
with those who carry arms.”
It was the first time that a high-ranking Syrian official had signaled
that the government is open to talking with Syrian rebels who have taken
up weapons against the armed forces.
It was unclear whether Mr. Moallem’s offer came with caveats, such as a
precondition that the Syrian rebels must disarm first. More
fundamentally, if the aim of Mr. Moallem’s offer was to achieve a
cease-fire while perpetuating Mr. Assad’s hold on power it would be
fundamentally at odds with the demand of the opposition that the Syrian
leader be ousted.
Mr. Kerry was skeptical of Mr. Moallem’s intentions.
“What has happened in Aleppo in the last days is unacceptable,” Mr.
Kerry said, referring to the Scud missile attacks the Assad government
directed at the city last week. “It’s pretty hard to understand how,
when you see these Scuds falling on the innocent people of Aleppo, it’s
possible to take their notion that they’re ready to have a dialogue very
seriously.”
London was the first stop on Mr. Kerry’s nine-nation tour, and Syria
figured prominently in his discussions with William Hague, the British
foreign secretary, who sent a strong message that more had to be done to
support the Syrian opposition because the possibility of a political
solution was “blocked off.”
“Our policy cannot stay static as the weeks go by,” Mr. Hague said at a
joint news conference with Mr. Kerry. “It will have to change and
develop.”
The European Union agreed to a British proposal that nonlethal
assistance could be sent to armed groups inside Syria. Discussions were
now under way among European nations to determine just what sort of aid
could be sent, but some American officials had said it might include
night-vision equipment or armored cars.
Mr. Kerry declined to say whether the United States might also send
nonlethal aid to armed factions fighting Mr. Assad, saying that a
variety of ideas was under discussion.
“We are not coming to Rome simply to talk,” he said. “We are coming to
Rome to make a decision about next steps and perhaps even other options
that may or may not be discussed further after that.”
Mr. Obama last year rebuffed a proposal from the C.I.A., State
Department and Pentagon that the United States train and arm a cadre of
Syrian rebel fighters.
After his meetings in Britain, Mr. Kerry flew to Germany for meetings on
Tuesday with German officials and Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign
minister.
The United States has sought Russia’s help in facilitating talks on a
transitional government in Syria, but the American effort to reach out
to the Russians failed last year when the Kremlin balked at the demand
that Mr. Assad’s departure had to be one of the results of any
negotiation.
Among the factions of the Syrian coalition, the debate is not over
whether Mr. Assad must go but whether his departure is a precondition
for talks.
On Jan. 30, Sheik Khatib floated the idea of negotiations with members of the government
not directly involved in the crackdown. But many in the coalition
remain skeptical of talks with the government and see them as a way for
Mr. Assad to buy time.
On Monday, Samir Nachar, a member of the coalition, said that Sheik
Khatib had met in the past week with Muhammad Hamsho, a prominent Syrian
businessman who is close to Maher al-Assad, the president’s brother who
leads the army’s feared Fourth Division, and a frontman for many Assad
family enterprises.
Mr. Nachar said that Sheik Khatib had briefed him and other coalition
members on the recent meeting, which he said had been initiated by Mr.
Hamsho.
“Hamsho asked to meet Moaz al-Khatib and the latter agreed,” Mr. Nachar
said in an interview. “The meeting did take place, yes.” He said Sheik
Khatib had refrained from going into detail.
Mr. Hamsho is one of several Syrian figures on whom the United States
has imposed sanctions since Mr. Assad’s repression of a peaceful protest
movement that began in March 2011 and has since evolved into a civil
war.
Gen. Selim Idriss, the leader of the Free Syrian Army, the main rebel
fighter group, said that a cessation of violence by the government was
“the bottom line” for rebels before any talks. In remarks to Al-Arabyia,
a Saudi-backed news Web site, he also said, “There needs to be a clear
decision on the resignation of the head of the criminal gang Bashar
Assad, and for those who participated in the killing of the Syrian
people to be put on trial.”
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