Syria says truce is viable after week of airstrikes
U.N. envoy calls period of bombing one of worst of war
BEIRUT — Syria’s foreign minister said Monday that an internationally brokered cease-fire is still viable, as rescue workers in Aleppo sifted through the rubble from the heaviest airstrikes on rebel-held areas of the northern city in five years.
Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, speaking to AlMayadeen TV from New York, also said the government is prepared to take part in a unity government incorporating elements from the opposition, an offer that has been rejected in the past.
Opposition activists say more than 200 civilians have been killed in the past week under a sustained aerial campaign that U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura called one of the worst of the 51⁄2-year war. The United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting but failed to take action because of deep divisions between Russia and Western powers.
“What Russia is sponsoring and doing is not counterterrorism, it’s barbarism,” said U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power. “It’s apocalyptic what is being done in eastern Aleppo.”
Airstrikes on Aleppo on Monday killed at least six people, according to the Local Coordination Committees, an activist-run collective. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported hours later that 12 were killed, including three children.
President Bashar Assad’s media adviser told Al-Mayadeen TV that the Syrian government abided by the cease-fire but the rebels did not. Bouthaina Shaaban said once the truce expired “our Syrian Arab army resumed its operations against terrorists.”
Al-Moallem accused the U.S., Britain, and France of convening the Security Council meeting a day earlier to support “terrorists” inside Syria. But he said ongoing communications between 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 cease-fire ended one week ago.
A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the cease-fire is ineffective but that Moscow is not losing hope for a political solution to the country’s crisis.
However, Dmitry Peskov said Monday that the Kremlin is 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 United States and Britain over Russia’s actions in Syria.
He said Russia considers the tone of the criticism unacceptable and “such rhetoric is capable of causing serious harm to the resolution process” in Syria.
Kerry said the Syrian and Russian governments “seem intent on taking Aleppo and destroying it in the process.”
“While they’re pounding Aleppo, dropping indiscriminate bombs, killing women and children, talk of a unity government is pretty complicated,” Kerry said during a visit to Colombia.
He said the Syrian opposition won’t be “particularly excited about having a negotiation when they’re being bombed and starved,” adding that statements by the Syrian regime are “almost meaningless.”
The White House meanwhile said it’s difficult to envision any military cooperation with Russia in Syria because Moscow has repeatedly failed to fulfill its commitments to the ceasefire deal.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that Syria’s government has launched a “concerted campaign” to strike civilian targets and that Assad’s forces are trying “to bomb civilians into submission.”