WORLD_ Kerry Says U.S. Came Late to Syrian Peace Effort

Kerry Says U.S. Came Late to Syrian Peace Effort




Free Syrian Army members in Aleppo on Monday. The government controls only 40 percent of the country, an Israeli official said.

By STEVEN LEE MYERS and ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: June 3, 2013
53 Comments

WASHINGTON — The United States came “late” to efforts to find a political settlement to the war in Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday, as the crisis there deepened with the political uncertainty in neighboring Turkey.

Mr. Kerry said an international conference — which he and his Russian counterpart proposed in Moscow nearly a month ago — remained the best approach for ending the fighting, but his remarks carried the implication that the Obama administration had moved too slowly in its first term to seek a negotiated political solution to a conflict that erupted more than two years ago and turned into a war.

“This is a very difficult process, which we come to late,” Mr. Kerry said after meeting at the State Department with Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski.

“We are trying to prevent the sectarian violence from dragging Syria down into a complete and total implosion where it has broken up into enclaves, and the institutions of the state have been destroyed, with God knows how many additional refugees and how many innocent people killed,” Mr. Kerry said.

The State Department’s spokeswoman, Jennifer R. Psaki, said Mr. Kerry’s remarks had not been intended as a rebuke of the administration’s policy thus far. “It’s not an implied criticism of anyone — more just a recognition that more needs to be done and that’s what we’re focused on,” she said.

His remarks underscored the ferment in the region, including the wave of protests in Turkey against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Although the protests began over a park project and remained focused on Mr. Erdogan’s leadership, the Obama administration sounded quite concerned by the prospect that they could distract Turkey’s government from helping manage the crisis in Syria and elsewhere in the region.

“We urge all people involved, those demonstrating and expressing their freedom of expression, and those of the government, to avoid any provocations of violence,” said Mr. Kerry, who has already traveled three times to Turkey as secretary of state.

Mr. Kerry and the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, expressed concerns about the use of force against the protesters.

There were new signs that the war in Syria threatened to destabilize another neighbor, Lebanon. On Monday unidentified gunmen tried to assassinate Sheik Maher Hammoud, a Sunni cleric from the Lebanese city of Sidon who has been a supporter of Hezbollah. As he and three bodyguards were walking to the mosque for dawn prayers, a Datsun pulled up and men inside opened fire, according to one bodyguard. No one was injured, the bodyguard said.

“Maybe it was one of these enthusiasts for the revolution, or an adventurer, or a teenager,” the sheik said in an interview. “How are you calling this a revolution, and you’re killing people in the streets — and clerics in their mosques?”

In Israel, the defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, said that President Bashar al-Assad controlled only 40 percent of Syrian territory and that the rebels now held four neighborhoods in Damascus, the Syrian capital.

In a closed committee meeting in Parliament, Mr. Yaalon reiterated Israel’s position that it did not intend to interfere in the Syrian war “so long as Israel’s own interests are not being hurt,” according to a transcript of his remarks provided by his office.

What Israel does not want to see, he said, includes the transfer of advanced weapons from the Syrian government to Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia; a loss of Syrian government control over chemical weapons; or a heating up of the frontier and a spillover of fire into Israeli-held territory.

Tensions have risen between Israel and Syria after three airstrikes on Syrian soil this year attributed to Israel. The first targeted a convoy of ground-to-air missiles destined for Hezbollah, according to officials.

Mr. Yaalon said that “recent tensions stem from the fact that we were blamed for strikes on Fateh-110 missiles,” apparently confirming that the Iranian-supplied missiles were the target of the raid on a warehouse at Damascus International Airport last month, if not Israel’s role in it.

Although Mr. Kerry’s remarks raised the specter of a collapsing state, he laid the blame entirely on Mr. Assad. “What is happening in Syria is happening because one man, who has been in power with his family for, you know, years now, more than 40 years, will not consent to an appropriate process by which the people of Syria can protect minorities, be inclusive and have the people of Syria decide their future.”

Steven Lee Myers reported from Washington, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.

A version of this article appeared in print on June 4, 2013, on page A7 of the New York edition with the headline: Kerry Says U.S. Came Late to Syrian Peace Effort.



Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc .
Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị .




conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
04062013
___________
Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là đồng lõa với TỘI ÁC