Kerry says US not abandoning peace efforts in Syria
BRUSSELS — The United States won’t abandon its pursuit of peace in Syria after suspending direct U.S.-Russian talks on a cease-fire, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday, even as he announced no new strategy to replace diplomatic efforts with Russia.
Washington and Moscow will still discuss Syria as part of larger multilateral negotiations, Kerry said, and they’ll make sure their warplanes conducting bombing missions in the Arab country don’t cross paths. Explaining Monday’s announcement to halt bilateral contacts over Syria, he said Russia has rejected diplomacy and chosen instead to help Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government achieve a military victory over rebel groups.
“We acknowledge in sorrow and, I have to tell you, a great sense of outrage that Russia has turned a blind eye to Assad’s deplorable use of these weapons of war, chlorine gas and barrel bombs, against his people,” Kerry said in a speech focused on trans-Atlantic ties at an event hosted by the German Marshall Fund in Brussels.
“Together, the Syrian regime and Russia seemed to have rejected diplomacy,” he said, opting for a victory at the expense of “the broken bodies, bombed-out hospitals and traumatized children of a long-suffering land.”