Obama: Assad must go for peace in Syria

The visit coincided with the adoption of Friday’s UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire and political settlement in Syria, which was unanimously adopted.

A gathering in the U.N. Security Council of foreign ministers lead by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry vote on a draft resolution concerning Syria, Friday, Dec. 18, 2015 at U.N. headquarters.

“It’s our hope that a nationwide ceasefire can go into effect, excluding only Daesh and al-Nusrah and any other group that we might decide at some time to designate”, he said.

The UN Secretary-General called on International Syria Support Group (ISSG) states to pressure the sides to immediately implement confidence-building measures, including an end to the indiscriminate use of weapons against civilians, unhampered access for humanitarian aid convoys and the release of all detainees.

Tehran will work with Russia, Oman, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan and France to prepare a list of terror groups and the real Syrian opposition, Amir-Abdollahian said.

Russia, a top Syria ally, and the West continue to be split on the central issue in any discussions on a political transition: the fate of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Russian Federation and Iran have consistently rejected foreign governments’ calls for Assad’s departure.

“President Assad in our judgment… has lost the ability, the credibility to be able to unite the country and to provide the moral credibility to be able to govern it”.

He said Kerry’s efforts in NY offered “an opportunity, not to turn back the clock- it’s going to be hard to completely overcome the devastation that’s happened in Syria already- but to find a political transition that maintains the Syrian state, that recognises a bunch of stakeholders inside of Syria and hopefully to initiate a ceasefire”.

Ministers said they would meet again in January, and de Mistura is now tasked with pulling together a final negotiating team for the Syrian opposition.

He told reporters that he was “not too optimistic about what has been achieved today, but a very important step has been made… for Syrians to determine the future of their country”.

Russian Federation is now agreeing to the drafting of a new constitution and new elections, a position that has evolved over the last few months.

German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier discusses the U.N. Security Council’s approval of a possible political solution to end a conflict that started almost five years ago.

The resolution gives a United Nations blessing to a plan negotiated previously in Vienna that calls for a ceasefire, talks between the Syrian government and opposition, and a roughly two-year timeline to create a unity government and hold elections. Moscow, meanwhile, has been bolstering Assad with airstrikes ostensibly aimed at ISIS but more often, according to the Pentagon, targeting other opposition fighters, including ones supported by Washington.