{"id":25422,"date":"2015-12-16T09:03:54","date_gmt":"2015-12-16T17:03:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/assad-can-stay-for-now-kerry-accepts-russian-stance\/"},"modified":"2015-12-16T09:03:54","modified_gmt":"2015-12-16T17:03:54","slug":"assad-can-stay-for-now-kerry-accepts-russian-stance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/assad-can-stay-for-now-kerry-accepts-russian-stance\/","title":{"rendered":"Assad can stay, for now: Kerry accepts Russian stance"},"content":{"rendered":"

MOSCOW<\/strong> \u2014 U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday accepted Russia\u2019s long-standing demand that President Bashar Assad\u2019s future be determined by his own people, as Washington and Moscow edged toward putting aside years of disagreement over how to end Syria\u2019s civil war.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States and our partners are not seeking so-called regime change,\u201d Kerry told reporters in the Russian capital after meeting President Vladimir Putin. A major international conference on Syria would take place later this week in New York, Kerry announced.<\/p>\n

Kerry reiterated the U.S. position that Assad, accused by the West of massive human rights violations and chemical weapons attacks, won\u2019t be able to steer Syria out of more than four years of conflict.<\/p>\n

But after a day of discussions with Assad\u2019s key international backer, Kerry said the focus now is \u201cnot on our differences about what can or cannot be done immediately about Assad.\u201d Rather, it is on facilitating a peace process in which \u201cSyrians will be making decisions for the future of Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kerry\u2019s declarations crystallized the evolution in U.S. policy on Assad over the last several months, as the Islamic State group\u2019s growing influence in the Middle East has taken priority.<\/p>\n

President Barack Obama first called on Assad to leave power in the summer of 2011, with \u201cAssad must go\u201d being a consistent rallying cry. Later, American officials allowed that he wouldn\u2019t have to resign on \u201cDay One\u201d of a transition. Now, no one can say when Assad might step down.<\/p>\n

Russia, by contrast, has remained consistent in its view that no foreign government could demand Assad\u2019s departure and that Syrians would have to negotiate matters of leadership among themselves. Since late September, it has been bombing terrorist and rebel targets in Syria as part of what the West says is an effort to prop up Assad\u2019s government.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one should be forced to choose between a dictator and being plagued by terrorists,\u201d Kerry said. However, he described the Syrian opposition\u2019s demand that Assad must leave as soon as peace talks begin as a \u201cnonstarting position, obviously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier Tuesday in the Kremlin, Putin noted several \u201coutstanding issues\u201d between Russia and its former Cold War foe. Beyond Assad, these include which rebel groups in Syria should be allowed to participate in the transition process and which should be deemed terrorists, and like the Islamic State group and al-Qaida, combatted by all.<\/p>\n

Jordan is working on finalizing the list of terrorist vs. legitimate opposition forces. Representatives of Syria\u2019s opposition themselves hope this week to finalize their negotiating team for talks with Assad\u2019s government. The U.S., Russia and others hope those talks will begin early next year.<\/p>\n

Appearing beside Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov hailed what he described as a \u201cbig negotiating day,\u201d saying the sides advanced efforts to define what a Syrian transition process might look like.<\/p>\n

The two countries also have split on Ukraine since Russia\u2019s annexation of the Crimea region last year and its ongoing, though diminished, support for separatist rebels in the east of the country. The U.S. has pressed severe economic sanctions against Russia in response and has insisted that Moscow\u2019s actions have left it isolated.<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t the case on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t seek to isolate Russia as a matter of policy, no,\u201d Kerry said. The sooner Russia implements a February cease-fire that calls for withdrawal of Russian forces and materiel and a release of all prisoners, he said, the sooner that \u201csanctions can be rolled back.\u201d<\/p>\n

The world is better off when Russia and the U.S. work together, he added, calling Obama and Putin\u2019s current cooperation a \u201csign of maturity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no policy of the United States, per se, to isolate Russia,\u201d Kerry stressed.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Klapper reported from Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MOSCOW \u2014 U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday accepted Russia\u2019s long-standing demand that President Bashar Assad\u2019s future be determined by his own people, as Washington and Moscow edged toward putting aside years of disagreement over how to end Syria\u2019s civil war. \u201cThe United States and our partners are not seeking so-called regime change,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-25422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25422"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=25422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}