Secretary of State John Kerry admitted Friday he’s “tired of these meetings” over the Syrian civil war, as he rallied U.S. embassy staff for a diplomatic push before leaving office.
“I know people are tired of these meetings. I’m tired of these meetings,” Kerry said during a meet-and-greet with staff at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, France. “And people are sort of, ‘Oh, another meeting. Okay. This one will end the same way the other one did.’ I get it, folks. I’m not born yesterday. But what am I supposed to do? Go home and have a nice weekend in Massachusetts while people are dying? Sit there in Washington and do nothing? That’s not the way you do business.”
Kerry has struggled to negotiate an end to the Syrian civil war, particularly since Russia intervened militarily to prop up incumbent dictator Bashar Assad’s regime. Pro-regime forces have besieged a combination of U.S.-backed rebels and jihadists in Aleppo, a major city in northern city. Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov struck a ceasefire deal in September that would have allowed humanitarian aid to flow into the city, but the deal was broken with the bombing of a United Nations aid convoy.
Russia has continued the bombardment of Aleppo since the end of the U.S. presidential election, despite U.S. protestations against attacks in hospitals and other aid workers. Kerry and Lavrov expect to meet in Geneva this weekend to negotiate what Lavrov has predicted would be a withdrawal of rebels from Aleppo. Assad’s victory in Syria has long-term foreign policy significance for Russia, which is planning for a permanent naval base in Syria that would secure access to the Mediterranean Sea.
“Those armed groups who refuse to leave eastern Aleppo will be considered to be terrorists,” Lavrov said Monday. “We will treat them as such, as terrorists, as extremists and will support a Syrian army operation against those criminal squads.”
Kerry’s team has been short on the specifics of potential deal, however, declining to describe the details of the coming talks or whether the end result would cede Aleppo to Russia and the Assad regime. “I don’t want to get into the substance or the preconditions of what we may have going into the talks tomorrow in Geneva,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Friday.
