Kerry: ‘Provisional agreement’ reached on Syria ceasefire

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in a telephone conversation on Sunday continued discussing modality and terms for truce in Syria, with the exception for the operation against terrorists.

Kerry said he discussed the terms with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and said the two must now reach out to the opposing forces in the conflict.

Kerry said he hoped President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin would talk soon and that hopefully, after that, implementation could begin.

“We are in fact making progress even as I stand here today”, Kerry said as he stood alongside Nasser Judeh, his Jordanian counterpart.

The cessation of hostilities is due to apply to all armed groups except for Islamic State militants, the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and any other groups listed as terrorist organizations by the United Nations.

The European Union, which is part of the Munich grouping, separately announced that Kerry and the bloc’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini had spoken by phone Friday and Saturday about the crisis in Syria.

After days of negotiation, diplomats from the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), a group of countries including the US, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran, agreed on February 12 to seek a temporary “cessation of hostilities” in Syria. “Will every single party agree automatically?”

Assad’s fate has been one of the main points of difference between Washington and Russian Federation, the Syrian leader’s main global backer.

He said enforcement issues still need to be resolved in addition to how any breeches will be addressed.

“At the end of the day, nothing will do more to make the fight against Daesh effective than to put in place a political transition that finds a government responsive to the desperate needs of the Syrian people”, Kerry said, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

The toll in a double vehicle bomb attack in the central city of Homs on Sunday rose to 46 dead, with dozens more injured, a monitor said. But the fighting has ground on, including blasts that killed about 90 people on Sunday, according to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The television report aired footage of the destruction caused by the blasts.

Homs, once dubbed the capital of the Syrian revolution, has been hit with a wave of explosions in recent months, killing and wounding scores of people.