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Fri Feb 12, 2016
7:47pm EST
Russia
keeps bombing despite Syria truce; Assad vows to fight on
MUNICH/AMMAN | BY
JOHN IRISH AND WARREN STROBEL
Major powers agreed
on Friday to a pause in combat in Syria, but Russia pressed on with
bombing in support of its ally President Bashar al-Assad, who vowed
to fight until he regained full control of the country.
Although billed as a
potential breakthrough, the "cessation of hostilities"
agreement does not take effect for a week, at a time when Assad's
government is poised to win its biggest victory of the war with the
backing of Russian air power.
If implemented, the
deal hammered out during five hours of late night talks in Munich
would allow humanitarian aid to reach besieged towns. It was
described by the countries that took part as a rare diplomatic
success in a conflict that has fractured the Middle East, killed at
least 250,000 people, made 11 million homeless and sent hundreds of
thousands fleeing into Europe.
But several Western
countries said there was no hope for progress without a halt to the
Russian bombing, which has decisively turned the balance of power in
favour of Assad.
U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry said that if the peace plan fails, more foreign
troops could enter the conflict.
"If the Assad
regime does not live up to its responsibilities and if the Iranians
and the Russians do not hold Assad to the promises that they have
made ... then the international community obviously is not going to
sit there like fools and watch this. There will be an increase of
activity to put greater pressure on them," Kerry, who was in
Munich, told Dubai-based Orient TV.
"There is a
possibility there will be additional ground troops."
U.S. President
Barack Obama has ruled out sending U.S. ground troops to Syria, but
Saudi Arabia this month offered ground forces to fight Islamic State.
A White House
spokesman, Eric Schultz, called the agreement "an important
step," but added, "In the coming days, we will be looking
for actions, not words, to demonstrate that all parties are prepared
to honour their commitments."
The complex,
multi-sided civil war in Syria, raging since 2011, has drawn in most
regional and global powers, producing the world's worst humanitarian
emergency and attracting jihadist recruits from around the world.
Rebels said the town
of Tal Rifaat in northern Aleppo province was the target of intensive
bombing by Russian planes on Friday morning. The British-based Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring body, said warplanes
believed to be Russian also attacked towns in northern Homs.
The news agency AFP
quoted Assad as saying he would continue to fight terrorism while
talks took place. He said he would retake the entire country,
although this could take a long time.
Another week of
fighting would give Syria's government and its Russian, Lebanese and
Iranian allies time to press on with the encirclement of Aleppo,
Syria's biggest city before the war, which they are now on the verge
of capturing.
They are also close
to sealing the Turkish border, a lifeline of rebel territory for
years.
Those two victories
would reverse years of insurgent gains, effectively ending the
rebels' hopes of dislodging Assad through force, the cause they have
fought for since 2011 with the encouragement of Arab states, Turkey
and the West.
The cessation of
hostilities agreement falls short of a formal ceasefire, since it was
not signed by the main warring parties, the opposition and government
forces.
Two Syrian rebel
commanders told Reuters they had been sent "excellent
quantities" of ground-to-ground Grad missiles with a range of 20
km (12 miles) by foreign backers in recent days to help confront the
Russian-backed offensive.
Foreign opponents of
Assad including Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been supplying vetted
rebel groups with weapons via a Turkey-based operations centre. Some
of the vetted groups have received military training overseen by the
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Russia suggested it
might not stop its air strikes, even when the cessation of
hostilities takes effect in a week.
Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov said Russia would not stop bombing fighters from
Islamic State and a rebel group called the Nusra Front, which is
affiliated with al Qaeda, neither of which were covered by the
cessation deal. "Our airspace forces will continue working
against these organisations," he said.
Moscow has always
said that those two jihadist groups are the principal targets of its
air campaign. Western countries say Russia, in fact, has been
attacking mostly other insurgent groups. Turkey's foreign minister
said on Friday Russia was targeting schools and hospitals in Syria.
NATO Secretary
General Jens Stoltenberg said Moscow must halt strikes on insurgents
other than Islamic State for any peace deal to work.
"Russia has
mainly targeted opposition groups and not ISIL (Islamic State). Air
strikes of Russian planes against different opposition groups in
Syria have actually undermined the efforts to reach a negotiated,
peaceful solution," Stoltenberg said.
Britain and France
said a peace deal could be reached only if Russia stops bombing
insurgents other than Islamic State.
The United States
has been leading its own air campaign against Islamic State fighters
since 2014. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Friday he
expected Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to send commandos
to help recapture Islamic State's eastern Syrian stronghold, Raqqa.
Assad said he
believed Saudi Arabia and Turkey were planning to invade his country.
Russia has said Saudi ground troops would make the war last forever.
Saudi Arabia's
foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said in an interview published on
Saturday that Russia's military interventions will not help Assad
stay in power. "There will be no Bashar al-Assad in the future,"
al-Jubeir told a German newspaper.
Kerry had entered
the Munich talks pushing for a rapid halt to fighting, with Western
officials saying Moscow was holding out for a delay.
The tactic of
agreeing to a break in hostilities while battling for gains on the
ground is one Moscow's allies used in eastern Ukraine only a year
ago. A ceasefire there eventually took hold, but only after
Russian-backed separatists overran a besieged town after the deal was
reached.
Diplomats from
countries backing the plan met on Friday to discuss sending urgent
humanitarian aid. "Convoys can go very soon if and when we have
the permission and the green light from the parties," said Jan
Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who chaired the
meeting in Geneva.
(Additional
reporting by Denis Dyomkin, Shadia Nasralla, and Robin Emmott in
Munich, and Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; Writing by Peter Graff,
Anna Willard and Will Dunham; Editing by Andrew Roche and Andrew Hay)
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‘
We
Syrians are all terrorists in the eyes of Putin’
Syrian
opposition says Assad’s backers in Moscow and Tehran are key to
stopping civil war.
By GIULIA
PARAVICINI 2/12/16, 6:01 PM CET
MUNICH — Syria’s
main opposition group reacted with skepticism Friday to news there
would be a ceasefire after five years of fighting, saying Russia and
Iran were only interested in saving President Bashar al-Assad —
whose continued presence made peace impossible.
The Syrian
opposition has long opposed any deal that allows Assad to remain in
power and complains that Russia’s bombing campaigns in Syria are
not aimed at helping international efforts to defeat ISIL so much as
weakening the opposition to Assad. The opposition’s Western backers
have urged Russia to cease bombing the Aleppo area in support of
government forces.
The “cessation of
hostilities” announced by the United States, Russia and other
members of the International Syria Support Group in the early hours
of Friday doesn’t clarify what should be the fate of Assad — who
told AFP on Friday he supported the peace talks, but intended to
retake the entire country.
The Syrian president
told the French news agency that “if we negotiate, it does not mean
that we stop fighting terrorism.”
U.S Secretary of
State John Kerry said upon announcing the ceasefire that “there
will never be peace in Syria while President Assad is there” —
but Russia’s Sergei Lavrov, who was standing beside him, dismissed
talk of a change of regime as “illusions.”
“We Syrians are
all terrorists in the eyes of Putin whose only goal is to keep Assad
in power, but while he stays in power any solution is impossible,”
said Salem Al Meslet, spokesman for the Syrian opposition’s High
Negotiations Committee.
“We do not want a
military solution but I don’t think a political one will be
possible with Assad. It is now the responsibility of decision makers
in the world to pressure Russia and Iran who support the Syrian
regime,” he said.
The committee did
not directly take part in the talks among world powers, which
produced a deal on a ceasefire that will start in a week. However, it
held separate meetings with participants on the sidelines of the
talks in Munich, where senior security officials and diplomats
gathered for an annual security conference.
“I hope the Syrian
regime and Iran will stick to the agreement signed last night, since
Syrian families are being slaughtered and starved and they can’t
wait any longer,” said Meslet, adding that the Saudi-backed
opposition wants Syrians to be able to return home and educate their
children in the name of “forgiveness,” but airstrikes against
opposition targets must stop before this can happen.
The ceasefire is
supposed to take force within days and permit the immediate delivery
of humanitarian aid. Two task forces will monitor the cessation of
hostilities and the delivery of aid.
“Russia has been
destroying everything in Syria and never came close to [ISIL]” —
Salem Al Meslet, Syrian opposition
What will not stop
are the airstrikes against ISIL and al-Nusra, which is considered an
al-Qaeda affiliate, by the international alliance that now includes
the Russians.
Pressure remains
high to defeat the extremists, especially ISIL which has carried out
terrorist attacks in Europe including the attack on Paris last
November. But there is concern among some top diplomats, as voiced by
British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond on Friday, that it might
permit the Russians to continue bombing “non-extremist groups
including civilians.”
“Russia has been
destroying everything in Syria and never came close to Daesh [an
Arabic acronym for ISIL], it’s Russia and Iran who are importing
terrorism,” said Meslet, who added that it should be “moderate
freedom fighters, not Russian airstrikes” who bring peace to the
country.
The High Committee
is coordinated by Assad’s former prime minister Riyad Hijab, who
defected from the Damascus government in 2012 to join the revolution.
The group, which has been participating in the U.N.-mediated Geneva
peace process, did not officially take part in the Munich ceasefire
talks, but held meetings on the sidelines with some of the
participants, including the United States, Germany and Saudi Arabia.
Nearly 500,000
people have now been killed during the civil conflict in Syria,
according to a new report from the Syrian Center for Policy Research.
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