WASHINGTON: With the devastating war in Syria entering its fifth year, the US has said it will have to negotiate with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as it aims to “reignite” new peace talks.

More than 215,000 people have been killed and half of the country’s population displaced, prompting human rights groups to accuse the international community of “failing Syria”.

Amid the dragging stalemate on the ground, the country has been carved up between government forces, militant groups, Kurdish fighters and the remaining non-jihadist rebels.

‘Washington, other parties trying to reignite talks’

Diplomacy remains stalled, with two rounds of peace talks achieving no progress and even a proposal for a local ceasefire in the second city Aleppo fizzling out.

Take a look: Assad lures Obama into his web

After years of insisting Mr Assad’s days were numbered, US Secretary of State John Kerry conceded Washington would have to negotiate with him to end the war.

“Well, we have to negotiate in the end. We’ve always been willing to negotiate in the context of the Geneva I process,” Mr Kerry said in an interview with CBS television, telecast on Sunday.

Deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, however, denied there was any shift in US policy.

“@JohnKerry repeated long-standing policy that we need negotiated process w/regime at table — did not say we wld negotiate directly w/Assad,” she said in a message on her Twitter account.

Mr Kerry acknowledged that it would need increased pressure on Assad, “to make it clear to him that there is a determination by everybody to seek that political outcome and change his calculation about negotiating”.

“That’s under way right now. And I am convinced that, with the efforts of our allies and others, there will be increased pressure on Assad.”

The conflict began as an anti-government uprising, with protesters taking to the streets on March 15, 2011, inspired by similar revolts in Egypt and Tunisia. But a government crackdown on the demonstrations prompted a militarisation of the uprising and its descent into today’s brutal multi-front conflict.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 215,518 people had been killed in the past four years, nearly a third of them civilians and including more than 10,000 children. The full toll is likely to be even higher, because the fate of tens of thousands of missing people remains unknown.

The UN refugee agency says Syria is now “the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era”. Around four million people have fled abroad, with more than a million taking refuge in neighbouring Lebanon, while others are sheltered in Jordan and Turkey — placing a huge strain on those countries.

Inside Syria, more than seven million people have been displaced, and the United Nations says around 60 per cent of the population now lives in poverty.

The country’s infrastructure has been decimated, and economists say the economy has been set back by some 30 years.

Mr Assad’s government has, however, been emboldened by both its military successes and an apparent shift in international rhetoric. Calls for his resignation have notably been more muted as international attention shifts to the threat posed by the self-styled Islamic State (IS) group.

Diplomats describe a new willingness to countenance a role for Mr Assad in Syria’s future, although Washington still insists that he has lost all legitimacy and must step down.

“Assad didn’t want to negotiate,” Mr Kerry told CBS television, about the last failed rounds of peace talks in Geneva.

“What we’re pushing for is to get him to come and do that,” he replied when asked if he would negotiate with the Syrian leader.

Russia, a key Assad ally, is floating its own dialogue process, and will host talks in Moscow in April, but it remains unclear if the internationally recognised opposition will attend.

Mr Kerry met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva in early March and discussed whether a new path to peace could be found.

“We are working very hard with other interested parties to see if we can reignite a diplomatic outcome,” Mr Kerry told CBS News.

The US secretary’s comments were flashed straightaway on Syrian state television.

Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2015

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