US not open to talks with Assad, says State Department

US secretary of State John Kerry said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that he still believed it was important to achieve a diplomatic solution for the conflict in Syria and that the negotiations should involve president Bashar al-Assad.

“We are working very hard with other interested parties to see if we can reignite a diplomatic outcome,” Mr Kerry said on the CBS show ‘Face the Nation’. “We have to negotiate in the end.”

But Mr Kerry’s comments seemed to be more a reflection of his determination to try to bring about an end to the bloody war than a change of American strategy. State Department officials later said the United States was not open to direct talks with Mr Assad, despite what Mr Kerry appeared to suggest in his television appearance.

And it remained unclear how the Obama administration planned to put enough pressure on Mr Assad to persuade him to relinquish power, which has been the United States’ long-standing goal.

Mr Kerry arrived in Switzerland on Sunday night for talks with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, as the two sides race to meet an end of March deadline for drafting the outlines of an accord that would limit Iran’s nuclear program.

It was not the Iran talks that made news Sunday but Mr Kerry’s remarks about a Syria peace process that no longer exists.

It was Mr Kerry who laid the groundwork for the Syria talks by flying to Moscow in May 2013 to secure Russia’s backing for an international conference that was intended to bring an end to the fighting. Mr Kerry said that year that his strategy was to put enough pressure on Mr Assad to force him to change his “calculation” about his ability to hold on to power, and then to put together a transitional governing body that would take over after the Syrian leader left office.

But, supported by Iran, Mr Assad strengthened his military position. While the Syrian government sent a delegation to the peace talks last year, US officials said that it showed no interest in compromise.

Two rounds of peace talks, which were held in the Swiss cities of Geneva and Montreux, failed.

Since then, Staffan de Mistura, the UN special representative for the Syria crisis, has tried to negotiate a ceasefire for the northern city of Aleppo, an effort Mr Kerry has said he supports.

But Mr Kerry has also sought to elicit the support of the Russians and Arab nations in the Persian Gulf to revive a broader diplomatic effort to resolve the crisis. “I am convinced that, with the efforts of our allies and others, there will be increased pressure on Mr Assad,“ Mr Kerry said in his television interview.

When asked if he would negotiate with the Syrian president, Mr Kerry responded that he would if Mr Assad would accept that the ultimate goal of the Geneva peace conference, which includes the movement toward democracy and the establishment of a new transitional government.

“If he is ready to have a serious negotiation about the implementation of Geneva I, of course,” Mr Kerry said. “What we’re pushing for is to get him to come and do that.”

Administration officials said later that Mr Kerry had not intended to signal a change of policy. The United States, they said, had no intention to align itself with Mr Assad in its struggle with the Islamic State, nor to accept an outcome in which the Syrian president would remain in power.

Though Mr Kerry appeared to signal a willingness to negotiate directly with Mr Assad in the interview, a State Department spokeswoman later said that US officials would talk only with representatives of his government.

“John Kerry repeated long-standing policy that we need negotiated process w/regime at table,” Marie Harf, the deputy State Department spokeswoman, said on Twitter. “There‘s no future for Assad in Syria.”

Andrew Tabler, an expert on Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Mr Kerry's interview had sent a mixed message.

“On the positive side, it shows that Mr Kerry is still determined to pursue a peace settlement in which Mr Assad has to step aside,“ Mr Tabler said. “On the negative side, there seems to be no clear strategy within the administration to make this happen.”

New York Times