BEIRUT -- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned Syria's government and its backers in Russia and Iran on Tuesday that they face an August deadline for starting a political transition to move Syrian President Bashar Assad out, or risk the consequences of a new U.S. approach toward ending the 5-year-old civil war.
"The target date for the transition is 1st of August," Kerry told reporters at the State Department in Washington. "So we're now coming up to May. So either something happens in these next few months, or they are asking for a very different track."
The current United Nations-endorsed transition plan for Syria says nothing about Assad relinquishing power or being prevented from running for re-election as president. His family has ruled Syria for four decades.
The top U.S. diplomat spoke a day after meeting the United Nations envoy for Syria and Russia's foreign minister in Geneva. The goal was to restore a partial truce that has all but unraveled during 12 straight days of fighting in Aleppo, Syria's largest city.
At least 280 people have been killed there since fighting resurged, according to monitoring groups in Aleppo.
Kerry condemned a hospital attack in the city that killed at least four people Tuesday and said a rocket appeared to have been fired from rebel-controlled territory. He said the U.S. rejects violence against civilians, whether it's by Assad's government or Western-backed opposition groups.
"If Assad does not adhere to this, there will clearly be repercussions," Kerry warned. "One of them may be the total destruction of the cease-fire and then go back to war. I don't think Russia wants that. I don't think Assad is going to benefit from that. There may be even other repercussions being discussed. That is for the future."
Kerry said the U.S. and Russia were working on the details of a more durable cease-fire that would include Aleppo and prevent the metropolis from falling. He said leaders on all sides must refrain from fighting for the cause of peace.
"If Assad's strategy is to somehow think he's going to just carve out Aleppo and carve out a section of the country, I got news for you and for him: This war doesn't end," Kerry said.
"As long as Assad is there, the opposition is not going to stop fighting," he said.
Kerry said he has told his counterparts in Russia and Iran that calm won't prevail in Syria if they're not prepared to move quickly toward a new Syrian government.
"Assad cannot reunite the country -- it's that simple," Kerry said.
"Having gassed his people, barrel-bombed his people, dropped bombs on hospitals, driven 12 million people out of their homes, tortured people, starved people, what kind of legitimacy should somebody who's committed these kinds of atrocities suddenly claim to run the country? It's pretty hard for anybody to understand how you make peace out of that record of chaos and depravity."
On the ground in Syria, rebel groups firing on government-held areas of Aleppo killed at least 20 people Tuesday, activists and Syrian state media said. The attacks included the deadly rocket strike on a hospital.
Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. envoy for Syria, held meetings in Moscow as part of crisis talks seeking to halt the escalation of violence in Aleppo.
The official Syrian Arab News Agency said "scores" were killed or injured in rebel shelling on government neighborhoods in western Aleppo. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, also said the hospital was heavily damaged.
The number of dead and injured in the attack could not be immediately confirmed.
In Moscow, de Mistura said he hoped to get a so-called "cessation of hostilities" back on track after a week of carnage all but collapsed the U.S.- and Russian-backed cease-fire in Syria.
Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said in Moscow that the United States and Russia would establish a joint center in Geneva to monitor the Syrian conflict. He did not offer any more details.
"There are groups in Syria trying to escalate violence ... and they shouldn't be allowed to do so," Lavrov said in a news conference with de Mistura.
The U.N. Security Council has responded to the attacks on hospitals and medical personnel, unanimously adopting a resolution Tuesday demanding that all parties to conflicts protect staff and facilities treating the wounded and sick.
The first-ever resolution focusing on the protection of hospitals and health workers in conflict zones urges all countries to bring those responsible for attacks to justice, something that has rarely happened.
The U.N.'s highest body reminded all governments and fighters that, under international law, any intentional attack against hospitals or places where the sick and wounded are collected is a war crime.
"Aleppo is burning ... and its civilians are being killed," U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft of the United Kingdom told the Security Council after members adopted the resolution.
The Security Council also scheduled a meeting on the escalating violence in Aleppo in response to an urgent request from Rycroft and U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre of France.
Diplomats said U.N. political chief Jeffrey Feltman will brief the council this afternoon.
Information for this article was contributed by Bradley Klapper and Edith M. Lederer of The Associated Press and by Erin Cunningham, Zakaria Zakaria and Brian Murphy of The Washington Post.
A Section on 05/04/2016