Kerry: US wants to avoid Syria’s destruction

MADRID—The United States is working to avoid the “total destruction” of Syria, and plans a meeting in the coming days with Russian, Saudi and Turkish leaders to seek an end to the conflict, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday.

Washington bears the responsibility “to try and avoid the complete and total destruction of Syria,” fearing the potential fallout across the region and a possible surge in migration, Kerry said on a stop in Madrid.

“We have a moral interest to try and stop this unfolding catastrophe,” he said. “The threat of many more (refugees) coming if the violence continues and Syria absolutely implodes is real.”

Kerry also said he feared the consequences of Russia’s air strikes in Syria.

Our fear is that “Russia is simply there to prop up (President Bashar al-) Assad,” he said, warning that Moscow’s air campaign might “attract more jihadists to the fight.”

If Moscow is willing to “help us find a political solution as well as… fight Daesh, then there is a possibility to try to find a way to another path,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State extremist group.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Sunday that trucks loaded with humanitarian aid entered four besieged Syrian towns and villages as part of a deal agreed last month between Syria’s warring sides.

A total of eight trucks carrying food and medical aid entered the Shiite towns of Kefraya and Foua, under rebel siege in Idlib province.

Also, trucks arrived in the towns of Madaya and Zabadani, where insurgents are holed up near the Lebanese border.

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent and UN agencies also undertook a similar operation in Kefraya and Foua, where they distributed food and supplies, she said.

The supplies were part of a bigger deal reached with the help of the United Nations in September in talks backed by Iran, which supported the Syrian government, and Turkey, which supported the rebels.

The initial deal included a sixmonth ceasefire in these areas and the evacuation of wounded rebels from Zabadani, which was the scene of fierce fighting between the Syrian army and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters on one side, and insurgents.

Earlier this month, the United Nations decided to hold back the deliveries because of intense fighting elsewhere in Syria.

But the arrival of the trucks, together with the fact that a ceasefire in the areas is holding, offers a rare chance of success for foreign-brokered diplomacy in a five-year conflict where at least 250,000 have been killed.