The State Department is refusing to answer questions about the Syrian ceasefire it claims to have negotiated with Russia, which U.S. officials have said extends the already tenuous truce to Aleppo.
The agreement was announced Wednesday, but since that announcement, it’s become clear that the parties either never agreed on specific terms, or one or more parties have altered the agreement unilaterally.
Two key details are in dispute. One is when it started: the U.S. said it began Wednesday morning, but Syria’s government said it started Thursday.
More importantly, Syria says the agreement only lasts 48 hours, while the U.S. has refused to confirm or deny that interpretation.
On Thursday, State Department spokesman Mark Toner agreed that there is “a little bit of a discrepancy” on when the deal began, and refused to say whether it would last 48 hours or indefinitely. Instead, he repeated that the U.S. wants it to last as long as possible.
If the deal did start Wednesday morning, and only lasted 48 hours, the agreement would no longer be in effect. But on Friday, another department spokesman, John Kirby, declined to say whether that was the case, and wasn’t any more clear in his description of the deal.
Kirby instead reiterated that the U.S. wants it to last as long as possible, and seemed to hint that the deal had a short shelf life, as Syria is suggesting.
“What we want and desire is for these cessations to be enduring,” Kirby said. “Ultimately, we don’t want to see time limits on this.”
Still, neither Kirby nor another State Department official reached by the Washington Examiner were willing to explicitly confirm that the deal was only meant to last two days.
Kirby disagreed when asked whether somehow the U.S. and Russia got mixed signals from each other about the terms of the deal. “I don’t think there was a lack of communication,” he said.
He also suggested that the press would be able to tell if the ceasefire is on or off based on violence levels in Aleppo. When asked if that’s a gauge for understanding the status of the agreement, Kirby said, “the levels of violence, yes.”
But even before the truce was extended to Aleppo, fighting has been seen throughout Syria, and the U.S. has been asked for weeks now whether it still believes the truce is working. Kirby acknowledged that the agreements are imperfect so far.
“Syria remains a dangerous place and there’s still a lot of suffering. But … for some Syrians in some places, life has gotten better. Not perfect,” he said. “There’s still … a government that is obviously showing a propensity to continue to kill them.”
“But life has gotten measurably better for some Syrians in some places,” he added. “And I don’t think we should lose sight of that.”
