COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- Defense Secretary James Mattis said the U.S. owes it to the people of Syria to take a close look at the Russian proposal to create several "safe zones" in Syria. But Mattis also said the plan poses many unanswered questions, including whether it would be effective.
Speaking to reporters traveling with him Monday to Copenhagen, Mattis said the borders of the proposed cease-fire areas are still being worked out although the general locations are "well understood." And he suggested that it's still not clear what effect the plan could have on the U.S.-led fight against Islamic State militants.
"It's all in process right now," said Mattis, who was offering some of the first extensive public U.S. comments on the agreement reached Friday by Russia, Turkey and Iran. "Who is going to be ensuring they're safe? Who is signing up for it? Who is specifically to be kept out of them? All these details are to be worked out, and we're engaged."
In Syria, the government said Monday that the agreement negotiated by Russia, Iran and Turkey, which took effect this weekend, could not be monitored by others, including the United Nations.
The declaration, made by Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem at a news conference in Damascus, added to uncertainties over how to ensure compliance with the agreement, which theoretically halts hostilities in four regions throughout the country.
"We do not accept a role for the United Nations or international forces to monitor the agreement," al-Moallem told reporters. Should there be violations, he said, "the Syrian army will be prepared to respond in a decisive manner."
He suggested that Damascus would agree only to Russian "military police" who are already on the ground, saying that "the Russian guarantor has clarified that there will be military police and observation centers."
Though he did not specify who the military police would be, he appeared to be referring to Russian observers already in Syria.
"There are still logistical details that will be discussed in Damascus, and we will see the extent of commitment to this agreement," al-Moallem said.
Russia, the main ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad and principal author of the agreement, had suggested when it was announced last week that outside powers could play a monitoring role.
U.S., Russia to talk
Even so, Russia has sent signals it is hoping to gain support for the agreement from the United States despite their deep differences over the Syria war, now in its seventh year.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will be meeting with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, about the Syria crisis on Wednesday in Washington. The U.S. State Department said in a statement Monday that Tillerson plans to discuss with Lavrov "efforts to de-escalate violence, provide humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people, and set the stage for a political settlement of the conflict."
The two also plan to discuss the Ukraine crisis, another issue where Washington and Moscow have been at odds for years.
Lavrov will be the highest-ranking Russian official to visit Washington since President Donald Trump's administration took office, and it will be his first trip there in years.
Lavrov, who rarely visits Washington, had been scheduled to meet Tillerson later in the week in Alaska on the sidelines of an Arctic Council summit. Asked whether Lavrov's visit boded well for improving ties, Tillerson said Monday: "We shall see."
Both diplomats will still travel to Fairbanks for that summit, where Tillerson will also meet individually with other foreign ministers.
On another diplomatic track, the United Nations' Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, announced plans to reconvene talks in Geneva between representatives of Assad's government and opposition leaders May 16.
A statement from de Mistura's office late Monday said he hoped the agreement struck in Kazakhstan would be fully implemented, to achieve "significant de-escalation in violence" and help underpin the political talks in the Swiss city.
Skepticism persists
The agreement, reached in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Thursday, is regarded as one of the more ambitious diplomatic undertakings by outside powers to halt the war, but it also has raised intense skepticism from insurgents and from some of their supporters, including the United States.
According to activists in Syria, there already have been skirmishes on the edge of a large cease-fire zone in the northwest portion of the country.
The State Department has expressed concern about the role of Iran in the agreement and the history of failed cease-fires in the war.
The U.S. is not part of the agreement, and the Syrian government and the opposition haven't signed on to the deal. The plan, however, does not cover areas controlled by Islamic State militants and U.S.-backed Kurdish groups.
That leaves the U.S. and its allies free to continue the campaign to retake Islamic State-held territory.
"We'll look at the proposal, see if it can work," said Mattis, who will attend a meeting of the anti-Islamic State coalition in Copenhagen and will also travel to Lithuania and to a conference in London this week. "Will it affect the fight against ISIS? I think the international community is united in the sense of wanting to see ISIS put on its back foot," he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State.
Mattis was circumspect when asked if the plan had any hope of ending the civil war that has killed some 400,000 people and displaced nearly half the country's population since 2011.
"The devil is always in the details, right? So we have to look at the details, see if we can work them out, see if we think they're going to be effective," he said.
The U.S. owes it "to the situation there, the people there to at least examine it very, very carefully," Mattis added. "All wars eventually come to an end. And we've been looking, for a long time, how to bring this one to an end."
During meetings today, Mattis will talk with more than a dozen key allies in the counter-Islamic State fight. One area of discussion, said the administration official, will be the effort to secure and stabilize Raqqa once Islamic State militants have been ousted. That will include removing mines and other explosives as well as ensuring more permanent intelligence sharing and law enforcement.
Zones' weapons curbs
Under the agreement, which is to last initially for six months, all combatants in the conflict are forbidden to use weapons in the safe zones, including warplanes.
The cease-fire is an effort to allow humanitarian aid to access hard-to-reach and besieged areas in Syria, where at least 4.5 million people in need reside. The deal also calls for refugees to be allowed to return to the safe zones and for services and infrastructure to be restored.
The results so far have been mixed. There was a reported drop in fighting in the four areas designated by the de-escalation agreement: Idlib province, north Homs province, the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus and parts of Syria's southern provinces.
Al-Moallem, Syria's foreign minister, said he hopes the agreement will, as a start, achieve a separation between Syrian armed opposition groups and extremist groups such as al-Qaida, saying the former must force the latter to leave the safe zones.
Information for this article was contributed by Lolita C. Baldor, Josh Lederman, Bassem Mroue, Jamey Keaten and Edith M. Lederer of The Associated Press; and by Rick Gladstone of The New York Times.
A Section on 05/09/2017