Tillerson again insists Syrian leader must go
U.N. special envoy says peace talks are to resume Nov. 28.
The secretary of state doubled down Thursday on Washington’s call for Syrian President Bashar Assad to leave power.
U.S. Secretary of GENEVA —
State Rex Tillerson doubled down Thursday on Washington’s call for Syrian President Bashar Assad to leave power, looking past recent battlefield gains by his Russian-backed forces to insist that “the reign of the Assad family is coming to an end.”
Tillerson made the comments after what he called a “fruitful” meeting with U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura, who later announced plans to resume U.N.-mediated Syrian peace talks on Nov. 28. It will be the eighth such round under his mediation in Geneva since 2016.
They come despite the fact that Assad’s forces have just in the past year recaptured Syria’s second-largest city and reached the key eastern city of Deir el-Zour, long under siege from Islamic State fighters.
The top U.S. diplomat used the occasion to reiterate Washington’s longstanding, hard-line position against Assad, which has been overshadowed of late by the Trump administration’s focus more on defeating the Islamic State than on ousting the Syrian leader.
Officials in Damascus could not immediately be reached for comment.
Syria’s civil war has left at least 400,000 people dead and driven more than 11 million people from their homes, and the United States has been calling for Assad to go nearly from the start of the uprising against him more than 61/2 years ago.
But this time, facts on the ground are playing more in Assad’s favor.
“The United States wants a whole and unified Syria with no role for Bashar Assad in the government,” Tillerson told reporters after the meeting at the U.S. mission in Geneva. “The reign of the Assad family is coming to an end, and the only issue is how that should be brought about.”
Tillerson made similar statements in April — before even greater territorial gains by Assad’s forces, prompting the Syrian leader to retort then that the diplomat had been “hallucinating.”
De Mistura announced resumption of the intra-Syrian talks in an address by videoconference to the U.N. Security Council following the Tillerson meeting. He said it was time to move on the political track to end the conflict, saying “now is the moment of truth.”
“It would be a mistake by all of us if we think that time is on our side,” the special envoy said. “The best way to proceed requires indeed instead an intensified engagement among the key players in support of the Geneva parties.”