U.S. officials don’t want to publish the details of the recently negotiated Syria cease-fire for fear of undermining the agreement, according to the State Department.
“There’s a lot of would-be spoilers out there who want to bring this deal and take it apart and make it fail,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters on Tuesday. “It’s still our assessment that we don’t want to share this thing publicly, but that assessment is ongoing.”
Secretary of State John Kerry announced the deal as a possibly landmark agreement to produce “a nationwide cessation of hostilities” against civilians that would allow humanitarian aid to flow to the people under attack from Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.
In exchange for a “sustained” cease-fire, the United States agreed to coordinate with Russia against the Islamic State and to prevent U.S.-backed groups from fighting Assad.
The unveiling of the deal proved confusing, however, as the State Department struggled to explain the extent of the coordination between the U.S. and Russia, and seemed to imply that the U.S. would approve Assad’s airstrikes.
“To clarify: The arrangement announced last week makes no provision whatsoever for the U.S. and Russian to approve strikes by the Syrian regime, and this is not something we could ever envision doing,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters in a statement released after the press briefing.
Kerry also explained that the cease-fire will be a success in his mind if it produces a “reduced level” of violence, rather than a complete stop, which raised questions about how to know if the deal was violated.
Meanwhile, the Russian military has accused U.S.-backed rebel groups of breaking the terms of the deal, while it has also been reported that Assad conducted an illicit airstrike within the first hour of the truce.
“There will undoubtedly be reports of a violation here and there, I’m confident, but that is the nature of a beginning of a cease-fire, almost always,” Kerry told reporters on Monday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov endorsed the publication of the deal, saying Tuesday that his government “has nothing to hide,” but the State Department dismissed that suggestion.
“We certainly appreciate his commitment to transparency,” Toner said sarcastically. “If we get to the point where we believe that we can share the details, we will.”
