John Kerry says he wants to “re-ignite” negotiations with President Bashar al-Assad to end the conflict in Syria. Despite spending years insisting that that the Syrian President should be removed from power, the U.S. Secretary of State now admits that the US will have to negotiate with Assad for or a political transition in Syria and is looking at ways to pressure him into agreeing to talks.
The Mail Online reports: Washington has long insisted that Assad must be replaced through a negotiated, political transition, but the rise of a common enemy, hardline militant group Islamic State, has evidently softened the administration’s stance towards him.
In an interview broadcast on Sunday, Kerry did not repeat the standard U.S. line that Assad had lost all legitimacy and had to go. Syria’s civil war is now into its fifth year, with hundreds of thousands killed and millions of Syrians displaced.
‘We have to negotiate in the end,’ Kerry told CBS News. ‘We’ve always been willing to negotiate in the context of the Geneva I process,’ he added, referring to a 2012 conference which called for a negotiated transition to end the conflict.
Kerry said the United States and other countries, which he did not name, were exploring ways to reignite the diplomatic process to end the conflict in Syria.
‘What we’re pushing for is to get him (Assad) to come and do that, and it may require that there be increased pressure on him of various kinds in order to do that,’ the secretary of state said
Niamh Harris
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