U.S. strategy on Syria draws flak

Kerry pushes allies to back cease-fire despite Russian plan

Syrians gather in a street after artillery fire struck in the Suleimaniyeh neighborhood in Aleppo last April, where fighting now is forcing civilians to flee to Turkey’s border.
Syrians gather in a street after artillery fire struck in the Suleimaniyeh neighborhood in Aleppo last April, where fighting now is forcing civilians to flee to Turkey’s border.

WASHINGTON -- As Syria's civil war continues in the absence of a cease-fire, President Barack Obama's administration has become increasingly torn between its loyalty to both NATO ally Turkey and Saudi Arabia and the cold pragmatism of Russia.

As Secretary of State John Kerry arrived Wednesday in Munich in search of compromises that could yield a truce and revive peace talks that were suspended before they really started, the administration is being pressed by all sides to clarify its strategy.

"We will approach this meeting in Munich with great hopes that this will be a telling moment," said Kerry, whose peace push will coincide with Defense Secretary Ashton Carter gathering in Brussels with NATO partners to hash out military options.

Russia has proposed a March 1 cease-fire in Syria, U.S. officials said Wednesday, but Washington believes Moscow is giving itself and the Syrian government three weeks to try to crush moderate rebel groups.

The United States has countered with demands for the fighting to stop immediately, the officials said. Peace talks are supposed to resume by Feb. 25.

The five-year conflict has killed more than a 250,000 people, sparked Europe's biggest refugee crisis since World War II and given rise to the Islamic State extremist group across parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq.

Russia says it is supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad's government as part of a counterterrorism campaign. But the West says the majority of its strikes are targeting moderate groups that are opposed to Assad and the Islamic State.

The most recent Russian-backed offensive, near Aleppo, prompted opposition groups to walk out of peace talks last month in Geneva, while forcing tens of thousands of civilians to flee toward the Turkish border.

The U.S. officials weren't authorized to speak publicly about private diplomatic discussions in the run-up to the Munich conference and demanded anonymity. One said the U.S. can't accept Russia's offer because opposition forces could suffer irreversible losses in northern and southern Syria before the cease-fire ever takes hold.

The officials said the U.S. counterproposal is simple: A cease-fire that is effective immediately and is accompanied by full humanitarian access to Syria's besieged civilian centers.

In Munich, Kerry had talks planned late into Wednesday evening with U.N. peace envoy Staffan de Mistura and Adel al-Jubeir, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, a key backer of Syria's rebel groups.

Starting this morning, Kerry was to meet with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, and foreign ministers from Europe and the Middle East to discuss a cease-fire and humanitarian relief in Syria, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday.

Lavrov said last week that a cease-fire only will be possible once the Syrian army retakes control of the border with Turkey to block the routes "used to smuggle supplies to terrorists."

The Obama administration has been trying for months to clinch a cease-fire and pave the way for a transitional government in Syria that would allow parties to the conflict to concentrate on defeating the threat posed by the Islamic State, also known as ISIL and ISIS, and by the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front.

But U.S. allies have sharply criticized Obama's Syria policy.

On Wednesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called into question the U.S. commitment to fighting terrorist groups in Syria and cited Washington's failure to recognize a Syrian Kurdish rebel group as a terrorist organization.

"Are you on our side or the side of the terrorist PYD and PKK organizations?" Erdogan said in an address to provincial officials in the Turkish capital, Ankara, referring to U.S. support for members of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, in their fight against the Islamic State in Syria.

Tensions between Turkey and the U.S. have grown over their differing positions on the Kurds. Turkey considers the Kurdish Democratic Union Party to be a terrorist organization through its affiliation with the Kurdistan Workers' Party which has carried out a three-decade-long insurgency against Turkey.

"Hey, America. Because you never recognized them as a terrorist group, the region has turned into a sea of blood," Erdogan said.

In Paris, Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, reiterated his long-standing disapproval of the U.S. policy on Syria.

While announcing his decision to step down after nearly four years as foreign minister, Fabius said the U.S. plan for Syria was "ambiguous" and denounced an absence of "very strong commitment," according to Reuters.

Brett McGurk, Obama's point-man for defeating the Islamic State, said Russia's Aleppo offensive was having the perverse effect of helping the extremists by drawing local fighters away from the battle against the Islamic State and to the war against Syria's government.

"What Russia's doing is directly enabling ISIL," McGurk told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington.

But the panel's top Democrat echoed some of the frustration of his Republican colleagues with the larger U.S. strategy.

"It seems as if we're only halfheartedly going after ISIS, and halfheartedly helping the [rebel group] Free Syria Army and others on the ground," said Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y. He urged a "robust campaign, not a tentative one, not one that seems like we're dragging ourselves in ... to destroy ISIS and get rid of Assad."

Kerry emphasized Tuesday that U.S. officials "are not blind to what is happening." He said the Aleppo battle makes it "much more difficult to be able to come to the table and to be able to have a serious conversation."

Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Lee and Bradley Klapper of The Associated Press; by Ceylan Yeginsu and Adam Nossiter of The New York Times; and by Jonathan Tirone, Henry Meyer and Dana Khraiche of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 02/11/2016

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