NEW YORK (AP) — The United States and Russia are
taking their differences over the conflict in Syria to new heights,
after trading ferocious allegations of duplicity and malfeasance at the
United Nations Security Council.
After a fractious meeting of the council on
Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov were set to duel again over Syria at a gathering of the
roughly 20 nations that have an interest in Syria. Thursday's meeting of
the International Syria Support Group comes after the two men blamed
each other for spoiling the country's cease-fire that they had agreed to
earlier this month. Each has blamed the other for violations.
Kerry called for all warplanes to halt flights over
aid routes, while Lavrov suggested a possible three-day pause in
fighting to get the truce back on track.
Thursday's meeting comes a day after Kerry and Lavrov
abandoned diplomatic niceties in a fractious public debate over Syria,
blaming each other for the failure of a week-old truce and offering only
temporary patches to stem the bloodshed.
In a U.N. Security Council session originally
envisioned to enshrine the Sept. 9 truce, world powers rued the
possibility of a darker phase in the conflict amid increased attacks on
humanitarian workers. The council's nations all sought to revive the
U.S.-Russian cease-fire deal, but once again illustrated why they've
been unable for more than five years to stop Syria's civil war.
"Supposedly we all want the same goal. I've heard
that again and again," a visibly angry Kerry told the council.
"Everybody sits there and says we want a united Syria, secular,
respecting the rights of all people, in which the people of Syria can
choose their leadership. But we are proving woefully inadequate in our
ability to be able to get to the table and have that conversation and
make it happen."
While the U.S. and Russia have previously butted
heads over several proposed resolutions critical of the Syrian
government, Wednesday's agenda didn't even include a suggested course of
action. Instead, the two-hour discussion served as a warm-up act for a
Thursday meeting blocks away in New York that will include Kerry, Lavrov
and their counterparts from more than a dozen European and Arab
countries.
Kerry blamed Russia, lambasting what he portrayed as a
cynical response to an airstrike on a humanitarian aid convoy this week
that killed 20 civilians and raised "profound doubt" about Russia's and
Syria's willingness to abide by the cease-fire. The U.S. believes that a
Russian-piloted aircraft carried out the strike, said a senior American
official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the matter and
demanded anonymity.
Russia has denied U.S. claims that it was
responsible, but Kerry focused on its shifting explanation of what might
have happened.
First, Kerry said, Russian President Vladimir
Putin's press secretary described the attack as a "necessary response"
to an alleged offensive by al-Qaida-linked militants elsewhere in the
country. Then, a Russian ambassador said forces were targeting another
area.
Russia's Defense Ministry followed by saying
the aid convoy was accompanied by militants in a pickup truck with a
mortar, Kerry said, adding that no such evidence exists. Then, the
ministry denied any Russian or Syrian involvement as its spokesman
suggested, in Kerry's words, that "the food and the medicine just
spontaneously combusted."
"This is not a joke," Kerry exclaimed, urging
all to stop the "word games that duck responsibility or avoid the
choices ... with respect to war and peace, life and death." His pleas
crossed paths with another statement by Russia's government, this time
suggesting a U.S. coalition Predator drone was operating nearby when the
convoy attack occurred. The Pentagon said no drone was in the area at
the time.
It was one of Kerry's most bitter exchanges with Moscow as secretary of state, laced with invective and outrage.
But he also offered one concrete suggestion
to revive diplomatic hopes: to ground all aircraft in key areas, focused
on protecting aid routes in northern Syria. It was unclear if Russia
and Syria would agree.
Kerry's words came immediately after Lavrov's
own barbs, underscoring a breakdown in trust since the pair sealed the
cease-fire agreement and potential U.S.-Russian military partnership
against the Islamic State and al-Qaida 12 days ago. Much of the
international community hailed that outcome, only to watch it unravel
amid an upsurge in violence that included an accidental U.S. strike that
killed more than 60 Syrian soldiers.
Lavrov, whose country has helped the Syrian
government shore up its position, said the U.S. bore the biggest
responsibility for peace by separating opposition forces from
terrorists. He called for the U.N. to expand its terrorism list to
include groups at the fringes of a U.S.-backed rebel umbrella group and
called Washington's errant strike an "outrageous violation."
The Russian also cited a series of truce
violations by U.S.-backed rebel groups near the northern city of Aleppo.
And in a not-so-subtle jab at Washington, he called Syria's conflict,
as well as those in Iraq and Libya, the "direct consequence" of foreign
military interventions and "political engineering."
Larvov and Kerry's speeches laid bare their
widely divergent views of a war that has killed up to a half-million
people, contributed to Europe's worst refugee crisis since World War II
and allowed the Islamic State to emerge as a global terror threat.
Lavrov on Wednesday mentioned the possibility of a three-day period of "silence."
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - French
President Francois Hollande on Tuesday appealed for an end to the
carnage in Syria, telling the United Nations: "Enough is enough".
"The Syrian tragedy will be seen by history as a
disgrace for the international community if we do not end it quickly,"
Hollande told the General Assembly.
The French leader described Aleppo, which has once
again come under a barrage of air strikes, as a "martyred city" and
blamed the Syrian regime for the collapse of a US-Russian ceasefire.
"Thousands of children have died in bombings, whole
populations are starving, humanitarian convoys are being attacked,
chemical weapons are being used."
"I have one thing to say here: enough is enough," he said.
The war in Syria, now in its sixth year with over
300,000 dead, is dominating this week's gathering of world leaders at
the United Nations.
US President Barack Obama earlier took the podium to declare that diplomacy was the only way to end the devastating war.
The United States and Russia, the regime's ally in
the war, earlier chaired a brief meeting of the 23-nation group backing
the Syrian peace process, but there was no breakthrough.
On Wednesday, the UN Security Council is to meet to
discuss the Syria crisis, with distrust between Washington and Moscow
running high.
Addressing
Russia and Iran, President Bashar al-Assad's backers, Hollande said they
must compel the regime to make peace, warning that "if not, they will
also, alongside the regime, bear the responsibility for the division and
chaos in Syria."
Vietnam’s prime minister, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, concluded a six-day
state visit to China last week that included meetings with President Xi
Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and top legislator Zhang Dejiang. Phuc also
attended the China-ASEAN Expo and China-ASEAN Business and Investment
Summit in Nanning and made a business-focused visit to Hong Kong. But
the trip’s primary focus was deepening economic and people-to-people
ties, which have been strained in recent years by spillover from China
and Vietnam’s disputes in the South China Sea. During Phuc’s meetings in
Beijing, he and his Chinese counterparts seemed eager to de-emphasize
those South China Sea tensions in order to pursue other areas of
cooperation. ...