BERLIN: US Secretary of State John Kerry began talks with his Russian counterpart yesterday aimed at bridging differences over Syria after voicing confidence the two could find “common ground”.
Shaking hands at the start of the meeting in Berlin, Kerry commented he was “happy to see” Sergei Lavrov since “we know each other” while the Russian minister quipped he would sit down when journalists allowed him to get to his chair.
Moscow and Washington have differences over Syria — Russia is one of the few big powers to keep ties with the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad and, with China, has vetoed UN Security Council resolutions that would have introduced sanctions against Damascus.
Hours ahead of his talks with Kerry, Lavrov had slammed “extremists” within the Syrian opposition who he said were blocking the start of dialogue in the war-torn country by making unrealistic demands.
He said that recent faint hopes that dialogue was possible between the opposition and the Assad regime had dissipated.
“It seems that extremists who bet on an armed solution to the Syrian problem have prevailed in the ranks of the opposition at this time, including the so-called (Syrian) National Coalition, blocking all initiatives that could lead to the start of dialogue,” Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.
Lavrov said there was “an increasing understanding of the need to influence both the government and especially the opposition in order to persuade them against putting forward unrealistic demands as the prerequisite conditions for the start of dialogue”. “During our latest phone contact it seemed to me that he (John Kerry) understands the acuteness of the situation,”
he added.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al Muallem had said in Moscow on Monday that the authorities in Damascus were ready to talk to armed rebels, the first time a senior official of the Assad regime had made such a proposal.
But the rebel Free Syrian Army’s chief of staff Selim Idriss said that before any dialogue could begin, Assad’s regime must fall, among other pre-conditions.
“I am not going to sit down with him or with any other member of his clique before all the killing stops, or before the army withdraws from the cities,” he told pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Arabiya.
AFP
