Kerry made his comments in an interview that aired Sunday as the civil war in Syria entered its fifth year.
“Well, we have to negotiate in the end. We’ve always been willing to negotiate in the context of the Geneva I process,” Kerry said in the interview.
But on Monday Assad dismissed the call, and he was quoted on the Syrian state news agency as telling Iranian television: “We are still hearing the declarations and we should wait for actions and then decide.”
The United States helped lead international efforts to kick-start peace talks between Assad and a splintered Syrian opposition, bringing the two sides together in Geneva for the first time early last year.
But after two rounds of talks, the negotiations collapsed in bitter acrimony and no fresh negotiations have been scheduled while the scale of the killing and devastation has mounted.
“Assad didn’t want to negotiate,” Kerry told CBS television on Sunday. “So if he’s ready to have a serious negotiation about the implementation of Geneva I, of course, if people are prepared to do that. And what we’re pushing for is to get him to come and do that,” he replied when asked if he would negotiate with Assad.
- Meanwhile U.S. ally Britain has insisted that Assad has no place in Syria’s future.
More than 215,000 people have been killed and half of the country’s population displaced since the war started five years ago. (alarabiya.net With AFP and Reuters)
16/3/15
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French foreign minister Laurent Fabius rejected any role for President Bashar al-Assad in Syrian peace talks, saying it would be a "scandalous gift" to the Islamic State group...
ReplyDeleteFabius's comments came a day after US secretary of state John Kerry acknowledged that talks with Assad were necessary to bring the bloody conflict in Syria to an end as it enters its fifth year.
"The solution is a political transition which would preserve regime institutions, not Bashar al-Assad. Any other solution which would keep Assad in the saddle would be an absolutely scandalous, gigantic gift to Daesh," Fabius said in Brussels, using another name for IS.
"The millions of Syrians who have been persecuted by Assad would transfer their support to Daesh. Obviously that must be avoided."
The French minister said he had spoken to Kerry and that the top US diplomat "assured me that there was absolutely nothing new in the American position on Syria."..........................http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/France-says-Assad-talks-would-be-scandalous-gift-to-ISIS/articleshow/46588158.cms
16/3/15