Syrian ceasefire still viable – Assad minister
BEIRUT: Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said in a TV interview broadcast yesterday that an internationally-brokered ceasefire for Syria is still viable, as rescue workers in Aleppo cleaned up from what they said were the worst airstrikes on rebel-held areas of the northern city in five years.
Al-Moallem, in the interview on Mayadeen TV from New York, also said President Bashar Assad’s administration is prepared to take part in a unity government, incorporating elements from the opposition – an offer that has been rejected in the past by his opponents.
The interview comes amid spiraling violence in Syria, particularly around the contested city of Aleppo. Opposition activists, more than 200 civilians have been killed in the past week under a sustained aerial campaign that UN envoy Staffan de Mistura called one of the worst of the 5 1/2-year war.
The UN Security Council convened an emergency meeting but failed to take any action because of deep divisions between Russia and Western powers.
“What Russia is sponsoring and doing is not counter-terrorism, it’s barbarism,” said US Ambassador Samantha Power. “It’s apocalyptic what is being done in eastern Aleppo.”
Al-Moallem accused the US, Britain, and France of convening the Security Council meeting a day earlier to support “terrorists” inside Syria.
But he said ongoing communications between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov meant a truce agreement brokered two weeks ago is “not dead”.
Syria’s military declared the ceasefire ended one week ago.
The spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said the ceasefire in Syria is ineffective, but Moscow is not losing hope for a political solution to the crisis.
However, Dmitry Peskov said yesterday that the Kremlin was concerned that “terrorists are using the cease-fire regime to regroup, to replenish their arsenals and for obvious preparations to carry out attacks”.
Peskov also took issue with harsh criticism by the US and Britain over Russia’s actions in Syria.
He said Russia considered the tone of the criticism unacceptable and “such rhetoric is capable of causing serious harm to the resolution process” in Syria.
Al-Moallem’s comments came as a second group of 120 rebel gunmen and their families began evacuating from an opposition neighbourhood in Homs, in central Syria, this month.
The developments further signal Assad’s determination to settle the country’s war on his own terms, securing surrenders through sieges and staying in power at least through an interim period to steer the country out of crisis. Pro-government forces have kept the Homs neighbourhood under a steadily tightening siege since November 2013, prohibiting food and medical supplies from reaching the remaining 75 000 residents, down from 300 000 before the start of the war in 2011. In exchange for the evacuations, the government is permitting aid convoys to supply the area with badly needed food and medical supplies.