John Kerry in Abu Dhabi for talks on Syria peace plan

The two spoke of efforts to halt Syria’s civil war through talks between the rebels and the government of president Bashar Al Assad, and the need to stop ISIL.

French police were yesterday examining what appears to be a suicide bomb belt dumped on a Paris street, 10 days after the attacks that killed 130 people.

At the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest said the US may step up efforts supporting strategies believed to be working – airstrikes and train-and-assist missions in Syria and Iraq – but he played down the possibility of any surge of new American resources into the fight.

Before the Paris attacks, the US had already made a decision to send special forces to Syria, and Kerry was involved in efforts to forge a cease-fire between the Syrian government and non-terrorist rebel groups.

Secretary of State John Kerry told NBC on Monday that people do not need to worry and that ISIS will be defeated. “We carried out strikes in Ramadi and Mosul in support of ground forces that were pushing against troops of (the Islamic State group)”, said army chief of staff General Pierre de Villiers, aboard the carrier. A majority of voters now say terrorism is the most important issue facing the country, supplanting the economy, which came in second with 21 percent, according to a Fox News poll released Sunday.

He asked people not to panic, in the backdrop of the Paris attacks and said that there was a strategy in place growing by the day.

JOHN KERRY: Well, I can assure you that we don’t have a specific threat stream or specific evidence in front of us, but there is always, as we’ve said to people for years, the threat of some actor, some lone wolf person, someone who slipped through.

After Vienna, Kerry is due to travel to Turkey, where he will join President Barack Obama at a summit of the Group of 20 major economies. The hopes are to get talks moving toward a political transition in Syria that eventually would unseat Assad.

A truce could be a couple of weeks away, he insisted, even if several matters remain unresolved.

Meanwhile, Ali Haidar, the Syrian minister of national reconciliation, echoed the remarks by Amir-Abdollahian, saying that no one is allowed to devise a timeframe on any Syria peace plan and that only the Syrians should decide about the mechanisms to achieve peace, Reuters reported.

Kerry said discussions Monday with Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir touched on Ahrar ash-Sham.

Kerry sought a middle line. “If we can get a cease-fire, if we can get a political process, that greatly facilitates what we can then talk to Russians and others about, in terms of coordination to go after Daesh”, Kerry added.