U.S., Russia reveal Syria cease-fire after chiefs talk
HAMBURG, Germany — The United States and Russia struck an agreement Friday on a cease-fire in southwest Syria, crowning President Donald Trump’s first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is the first U.S.-Russian effort under Trump’s presidency to stem Syria’s sixyear civil war.
The cease-fire goes into effect Sunday at noon Damascus time, according to U.S. officials and the Jordanian government, also involved in the deal.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who accompanied Trump in his meeting with Putin, said the understanding is designed to reduce violence in an area of Syria near Jordan’s border that is critical to the U.S. ally’s security.
It’s a “very complicated part of the Syrian battlefield,” Tillerson said after the U.S. and Russian leaders met for more than 2 hours on the sidelines of a global summit in Hamburg, Germany.
Of the agreement, he said, “I think this is our first indication of the U.S. and Russia being able to work together in Syria.”
For years, the former
Cold War foes have been backing opposing sides in Syria’s war. Moscow has backed Syrian President Bashar Assad, supporting Syrian forces militarily since 2015. Washington has backed rebels fighting Assad.
Both the U.S. and Russia oppose Islamic State militants and say they’re focused on rooting out the extremist group.
The potential pitfalls for the cease-fire are clear — not least the challenge of enforcing it.
Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russian military police would monitor the new truce. But Tillerson said that was still being worked out.
A senior U.S. State Department official said the two countries were close to a deal on that issue and hoped to finalize it in the coming days, raising the prospect it could take effect Sunday with no clear sense of who is policing it.
That the deal was announced before all the details were ironed out was an indication of how eager the U.S. and Russia were to cast their leaders’ first meeting as a success. Officials said the deal had been in the works for weeks or months, but came together in time for the meeting.
The deal marks a new level of involvement for the Trump administration in trying to resolve Syria’s civil war.
Trump ordered some 60 cruise missiles to be fired at a Syrian air base in April after accusing Assad’s forces of a deadly chemical weapons attack.
But his top military and national security advisers pointedly said they had no intentions of intervening to oust Assad. And they stopped short of endorsing Russian-led or U.N. peace mediation efforts between Assad’s government and rebel groups.
Previous cease-fires in Syria have failed to reduce violence for long, and it was unclear whether this deal would be any better.