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Syria Peace Talks Deadlock as Recriminations Fly Deadlock Remains and Aid Crisis Mounts as 2nd Round of Syria Talks Nears End
(about 4 hours later)
GENEVA — The second round of Syria peace talks deadlocked in acrimony and frustration on Friday, as the government delegation appeared to rule out any compromise with the opposition, throwing the future of the negotiations into more doubt. GENEVA — Frustrations mounted here on Friday as the second round of Syrian peace talks drew near a close without breaking a weeklong deadlock. The meeting’s sponsors, Russia and the United States, traded barbs, and American officials said they were developing new policy options to respond to the violence and humanitarian crisis in Syria that have only escalated during the talks.
Members of the opposition delegation called on the United States and Russia, the two major sponsors of the talks, to find ways to move forward, and said there was a small possibility of a final meeting between the antagonists on Saturday. But the prevailing mood was grim. The opposing parties here failed to agree even on an agenda, an impasse for which the United Nations mediator blamed the Syrian government delegation, according to two Western diplomats. The Americans and the Russians, by week’s end, appeared to have moved further apart on the goals of the talks and how to press the two sides to engage in substantive negotiations.
The impasse in Geneva came as the United Nations human rights office warned of new deprivations and civilian uprooting inside Syria and antigovernment activists in the country reported new mayhem, including a large car bombing in the south that killed dozens and the execution of 21 people carried out by Al Qaeda-linked jihadists in the north. All the while, in Syria, the government launched new military campaigns and accelerated a strategy of defanging the international talks by striking local cease-fires without addressing broader political issues. It pressed ahead with efforts to obtain the effective surrender of rebel-held areas it has long blockaded and even starved, and to persuade civilians to leave their homes in a process that its opponents condemn as forced displacement.
There had been some hope that the second round of talks in Geneva, which began on Monday, would make some progress on an agenda aimed at ending the nearly three-year-old conflict or at least finding a way to allow unfettered humanitarian aid to reach hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians in combat zones. New tensions between Russia and the United States appeared to complicate the picture. Russia bridled on Wednesday at an American-backed proposal for a United Nations Security Council resolution requiring the parties to allow humanitarian aid access, calling it biased against the government, and introducing a competing version.
The opposition delegation offered what appeared to be a significant compromise, or at least a softened tone, on Wednesday. While asserting in a 24-point proposal that the talks focus on creating a transitional government, the opposition’s language, for the first time, did not specifically demand that President Bashar al-Assad be excluded from such a government. The two countries are also at odds over recent protests in Ukraine, where pro-Europe demonstrators undercut a deal the Kremlin struck to keep Kiev in its orbit. Some government opponents here speculated that the United States attempt to pressure Russia in the Security Council had backfired.
But Mr. Assad’s negotiators, who have insisted that the talks should focus on fighting terrorism, did not even read the compromise, diplomats said. A senior United States official said on Friday that it was unclear whether the Russians were unwilling or unable to persuade the Syrian government to discuss what the mediator, Lakhdar Brahimi, calls the main goal of the talks, the establishment of a fully empowered transitional governing body “by mutual consent.”
Fayssal Mekdad, Syria’s deputy foreign minister and lead negotiator in the talks, said on Friday that all those who “carry arms against their people and their government are terrorists,” a position that appeared to rule out any common ground with Mr. Assad’s opponents. The official said Washington trusted “that Russia will urge the regime to engage in a serious and constructive way,” but added, “The regime hasn’t done so yet, and that speaks for itself.”
Mr. Mekdad also rebuked Valerie Amos, the United Nations relief coordinator, over her report to the Security Council on Wednesday. Although she blamed all sides for obstructing efforts to provide emergency food and medicine to Syrian civilians, she used her strongest language yet, denouncing attacks on aid workers and accusing both the government and the insurgents of flagrant violations of humanitarian law. But the official declined to say what further leverage the United States could apply beyond mobilizing global opinion, telling journalists that if Russia did not do “the right thing,” then “the whole world will see, and you will write about it.”
Mr. Mekdad called Ms. Amos’s comments “unacceptable,” signaling a new tension over the relief issue. In Beijing, Secretary of State John Kerry said President Obama had asked aides to develop new policy options on Syria, but he did not say what options were under consideration or whether the president had established a deadline for delivering them. Diplomats here said the administration might consider stepping up an existing covert program to train and arm the moderate Syrian opposition or even weigh the threat of military force to compel the delivery of humanitarian aid.
The Syrian opposition, backed by the United States and other Western powers, has accused Mr. Assad’s side of deliberately denying aid to civilians as part of a broader strategy to starve the insurgency into submission. But efforts to coerce the government to allow aid through a binding United Nations Security Council resolution are considered unclear at best. The senior official declined to say whether a policy shift was underway, saying options were always being reviewed. But in impassioned language, Mr. Kerry noted that since October, when the Security Council issued a nonbinding request for all sides to facilitate aid delivery, the crisis has worsened sharply. The number of Syrians in need of assistance has risen by one-third to 9.3 million. The number displaced outside the country increased by nearly 20 percent to 2.5 million, and inside the country by 50 percent to 6.5 million.
Frustration has reached the point where John Kerry, the American secretary of state, said during a visit to China on Friday that President Obama had asked aides to develop new policy options on Syria. “This is grotesque,” he said, “and the world needs to take note and figure out what the appropriate response is.”
Mr. Kerry did not elaborate on such options, but his remarks were seen as a possible effort to pressure Russia, Mr. Assad’s principal defender, to exert more influence on the Syrian government side. But Syria’s deputy foreign minister, Fayssal Mekdad, appeared newly confident on Friday after Russian officials made statements that dashed hopes they would put new pressure on Damascus.
Russian officials, for their part, accused the Syrian opposition’s Western backers on Friday of focusing solely on “regime change,” suggesting that Russia was unwilling or unable to soften the Syrian government’s negotiating position. Russian diplomats say they are not committed to maintaining Mr. Assad’s hold on power, but they insist on continuity in the government. Russian officials accused the opposition’s Western backers of focusing only on “regime change,” and seemed to support Syrian officials’ refusal to discuss a political transition until after talks on fighting terrorism in Syria.
The United Nations diplomat who has been mediating the talks, Lakhdar Brahimi, signaled his own frustration with the Syrian government side on Thursday, according to two Western diplomats. Mr. Mekdad declared that all those who “carry arms against their people and their government are terrorists,” appearing to rule out common ground with the opposition delegation, which this week for the first time included rebel fighters.
Mr. Brahimi, they said, had complained that the Syrian delegation refused to even touch, let alone read, the 24-point plan presented by the opposition on Wednesday. Instead, they said, the government delegates left the paper on the table and walked away. He also rebuked Valerie Amos, the United Nations relief coordinator, calling her comments to the Security Council on Thursday “unacceptable.” Although she blamed all sides for obstructing relief, she used her strongest language yet, referring to flagrant violations of humanitarian law.
The inability to even agree on an agenda was “a very bad omen” for the Geneva process, one Western diplomat said. The opposition delegation has called for ending violence by all sides, condemned all attacks on civilians and declared that it is fighting terrorism by battling the jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. But it has not taken new steps here to acknowledge other rebel groups’ atrocities, the cooperation of some of its allies with jihadists or growing sectarianism, contending those problems pale beside indiscriminate government bombardments that it blames for most civilian deaths.
“We expected that the talks would be difficult,” he said. “We didn’t expect that they would be unable to compromise on an agenda, and that, frankly, is not good.” Monzer Akbik, the chief of staff for the opposition president Ahmad Assi al-Jarba, said recently that it was absurd for the government to demand security assurances from the opposition. “We don’t want to kill them,” he said. “We want them to stop killing us.”
Mr. Brahimi, he said, might call off the third round if he is concerned about his personal credibility in presiding over an empty process. For its part, the opposition delegation offered what appeared to be a significant compromise, or at least a softened tone, on Wednesday. In a 24-point proposal laying out the structure of a transitional government, for the first time it did not specifically demand that President Bashar al-Assad be excluded from such a government.
But other Western diplomats here noted that Mr. Brahimi is famously patient and that the Russians would not welcome a collapse of the talks, particularly if it happened during the Winter Olympic Games underway in Sochi. But the government delegates refused to touch, let alone read, the proposal, a Western diplomat said. Instead, at the end of the meeting, they left it on the table.
At the United Nations on Friday, Security Council diplomats said they would meet later to discuss two competing draft resolutions on Syrian humanitarian aid: one from Russia, and a more strongly worded one from Australia, Jordan and Luxembourg. There was some hope that they could be reconciled, but the prospects were unclear.
In Syria, antigovernment activists and state television reported a car bomb exploded in the southern town of Yadouda near the Jordanian border. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group with a network of contacts in the country, said at least 32 people were killed including 10 insurgents and a child.
The group also said the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a particularly violent Al Qaeda splinter group that has antagonized others in the Syrian insurgency, had executed 17 rival rebel fighters in the town of Haritan, northwest of Aleppo, and thrown their corpses into a well. Four others were reported beheaded in Azaz, another town north of Aleppo.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, known by its acronym ISIS, has been increasingly blamed for worsening relations among anti-Assad group. Even the leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, has denounced the group for its violent methods. Earlier this month Al Qaeda’s central leadership officially cut ties with ISIS.