Lavrov visits Geneva for Syria talks with Kerry

John Kerry with United Nations special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura.

U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura says a resumption of the stalled intra-Syrian peace talks is likely to hinge on the outcome of bilateral talks between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, scheduled for Friday. However, as in Moscow, neither Kerry nor Lavrov would describe them in detail. Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohammad Al-Attiyah on Monday backed the deal on Iran’s nuclear programme as the best available option, after talks in Doha with US Secretary of State John Kerry.

For their part, USA officials say they are willing to press rebels groups they support harder on separating themselves from the Islamic State and al-Nusra, which despite a recent name change is still viewed as al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria.

Earlier, diplomatic sources in Geneva had said that a Kerry-Lavrov meeting was tentatively planned, but that whether one materialized depended on whether there was sufficient progress on Aleppo discussions. “We want a pause for 48 hours”, he said. Russian Federation maintains the attacks it has been involved in have targeted legitimate terrorist targets, while the United States says they have hit moderate opposition forces.

While Kerry touted that humanitarian aid has been delivered to over one million people as a result of previous negotiations, he said that ceasefire violations have become the “norm” and “the conflict will not end without a political solution”.

“The recent escalation in airstrikes and ground fighting in Aleppo is of deep concern to the United States”, a U.S. official, speaking not for attribution, told Al-Monitor on August 23.

“We are very much focused in maintaining our line, we want a 48-hour pause. we are ready, not only… verbally, we are ready practically, concretely, operationally”, de Mistura stated.

Under the US -proposed coordination deal, which the White House has approved over Pentagon objections, Russian and American planners would coordinate targets in real time and agree on whose aircraft would strike them. It is not excluded that Turkey’s operations in the area of the Turkish-Syrian border will also be touched upon. “We have discussed how the trucks will be sealed, how they be monitored, how we can guarantee that it is only humanitarian supplies going into these combat zones”.

The third element of the plan, he said, is to fix Aleppo’s electrical plant, which supplies 1.8 million people on both sides with both electricity and water.

The talks came as opposition groups effectively surrendered the Damascus suburb of Daraya to the government after a gruelling four-year siege.