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US Ambassador meets with Russian deputy foreign minister Amid cease-fire, Syrians rally against Assad in rebel areas
(about 7 hours later)
MOSCOW — Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov has met with the U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Tefft to discuss the nearly week-old cease-fire in Syria. BEIRUT — Amid a week-long cease-fire that has mostly held around Syria, opponents of President Bashar Assad staged small demonstrations Friday in rebel-held areas to call for his resignation.
The Russian foreign ministry wrote in an online statement that Bodganov and Tefft met on Thursday evening at Tefft’s invitation to discuss a range of issues relating to the U.S.-Russian brokered cease-fire. The ministry did not elaborate on the officials’ conversation. Hundreds of Syrians protested in the eastern sector of the city of Aleppo, in the western Waer neighborhood of Homs and in Idlib province, calling on Assad’s government to release detainees and lift several sieges — key demands of the opposition, ahead of peace talks planned to resume in Geneva next week.
On Thursday, Bogdanov also met with a Syrian opposition leader, Qadri Jamil, to discuss resuming Syrian peace talks at the United Nations in the near future. In Paris, meanwhile, France’s president said discussions about a political transition in Syria will “accelerate” with the truce holding across the war-wracked country.
Previously, the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said he hopes peace talks will resume in early March. High-level international discussions about Syria have intensified since the ceasefire went into effect last Saturday, although the truce does not encompass the whole of the country.
The “cessation of hostilities,” which was brokered by the United States and Russia, does not include the Islamic State group and al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front, as well as other militant factions designated terrorist organizations by the United Nations.
French President Francois Hollande, after speaking with the leaders of Russia, Germany, Britain and Italy, said from Paris that there was agreement to take advantage of the truce to coordinate humanitarian aid and open a process of political transition in Syria.
But he cautioned against advancing too quickly, however. “The idea that (parliamentary) elections might be held in (April) in Syria is totally provocative,” Hollande said.
British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond, also in Paris, said the hope is that ultimately a cease-fire would allow Syria’s moderate opposition and backers of the Assad government to work out a solution and fight the extremists together.
“This cease-fire, cessation of hostilities, is by no means perfect but it has reduced the level of violence it has created an opportunity for some humanitarian access,” said Hammond, after Friday’s meeting with his French, German, and European Commission counterparts.
The partial truce has dramatically reduced overall violence across the devastated country — a remarkable accomplishment in a war that has killed at least 250,000 people, displaced half the population and decimated towns and villages. Because the cease-fire agreement excludes areas held by the Islamic State group and the Nusra Front, some of the continuing violence is not technically a breach of the truce.
Syria’s conflict, which erupted in March 2011 as a popular uprising against Assad’s authoritarian rule — influenced in part by the Arab Spring movements across the Mideast — quickly descended into an all-out civil war that gave an opening to militants such as the Islamic State group and the Nusra Front to seize large swaths of land.
The current cease-fire has become the most promising initiative in years to help end the war, raising expectations ahead of next Wednesday’s planned resumption of Geneva peace talks.
On the ground in Syria, pro-opposition activist groups reported some hostilities on Friday, including shelling and airstrikes in different parts of the country.
According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has tracked the five-year civil war, two airstrikes hit on the edge of Damascus’ rebel-held suburb of Douma.
Another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees, said there were three airstrikes, which it attributed to Russian warplanes.
The rebel alliance known as the Islamic Army maintains the largest presence in the Douma area after its fighters routed Islamic State militants from there last August. A few hundred Nusra Front fighters are also reportedly operating in the area.
A civilian died in Douma, according to a local activist, Yousef al-Bustani, affiliated with the opposition “Revolutionary Forces of Syria Media Office” that is based east of Damascus.
The Observatory and the LCC also reported that Syrian government forces shelled the northwestern town of Khan Sheikhoun, saying three women were killed there.
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Hinnant reported from Paris.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.