US, Russia Seal Syria Cease-Fire, New Military Partnership

This undercuts Hillary’s effort to portray Trump as irresponsible to advocating the same thing. NYTimes:

GENEVA — The United States and Russia working in lockstep against the Islamic State group and al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria. A rejuvenated truce that will compel President Bashar Assad’s air and ground forces to pull back. New flows of badly needed humanitarian aid.

Those details emerged Saturday as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov capped another marathon meeting in Geneva to present their latest ambitious push to end Syria’s devastating and complex war.

The potential breakthrough deal, which launches a nationwide cessation of hostilities by sundown Monday, will hinge on compliance by Assad’s Russian-backed forces and U.S.-supported rebel groups, plus key regional powers such as Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia with hands directly or indirectly in Syria’s 5-1/2 years of carnage.

“We believe the plan as it is set forth — if implemented, if followed — has the ability to provide a turning point, a moment of change,” Kerry said as he and Lavrov laid out the contours, but admittedly not too much fine print, of the hard-won accord.

The ultimate hope is to silence the Syrian guns so that the long-stalled peace process under U.N. mediation can resume between Assad’s envoys and representatives of the opposition, while the two world powers focus on battling jihadis.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

The deal, at least publicly and for now, appears to overcome months of distrust between Russia and the United States that President Barack Obama had cited less than a week ago.

Now, the two powers are lining up in an unexpected new military partnership targeting IS and al-Qaida-linked militants, while trying to prod Assad and opposition groups to end a civil war that has killed up to 500,000 people and displaced millions.

“This is just the beginning of our new relations,” Lavrov said of the U.S.

Washington must persuade Syrian rebels to break ranks with Fath al-Sham, an al-Qaida-linked group previously known as the Nusra Front, which has intermingled with U.S.-backed fighters. Moscow is to pressure Assad’s government to halt all offensive operations against the armed opposition in specific areas, which were not detailed.

“The Syrian government has been informed of these arrangements and is ready to fulfill them,” Lavrov said at a news conference alongside Kerry after midnight.

Kerry said the arrangement depends on “people’s choices. It has the ability to stick, provided the regime and the opposition both meet their obligations, which we — and we expect other supporting countries — will strongly encourage them to do.”

He also alluded to the possibility of backsliding that all but doomed a previous U.S.-Russia cease-fire initiative earlier this year, which briefly halted the fighting and paved the way for new aid convoys before a resurgence of bloodshed.

“No one is building this based on trust,” Kerry said. “It is based on a way of providing oversight, and compliance, through mutual interest and other things. If this arrangement holds, then we will see a significant reduction in violence across Syria.”