MESOP NEWS SYRIA Daily: US Turns Down Meeting With UN Envoy and Russia

By Scott Lucas – eaworldview –  US spokesman: “At this time there is no new trilateral meeting scheduled.”

21 April 2017 – The US has turned down a possible re-entry into the political process over Syria’s conflict, declining a meeting with UN envoy Staffan de Mistura and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov in Geneva on Monday. The session was to evaluate the next planned set of indirect talks between the Assad regime and the Syrian opposition, scheduled for May 3-4 in the Kazakhstan capital Astana.

After working alongside the US since 2013 in a claimed attempt at political advance — but one which yielded no results — Russia pushed aside Washington last summer, preferring to deal with Turkey as well as the Assad regime’s other main ally Iran.

De Mistura insisted “the trilateral [meeting] is not off the table, it is just being postponed”, but he gave no rescheduled date.

A US spokesman also held a vague line, “The U.S. welcomes discussions with Russia regarding the UN-led political process on Syria in Geneva, and we have met in the past in the trilateral U.S.-Russia-UN format. But at this time there is no new trilateral meeting scheduled.”

The postponement added to uncertainty over Washington’s approach to Syria after its April 7 missile strikes on an Assad regime airbase. The 59 Tomahawk missiles, targeting the base from which a deadly chemical attack was launched three days earlier, was the first deliberate US attack on a regime position in the 74-month conflict. But the Pentagon made clear that the operation was only to deter further use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime, and gave no indication of any action against the Russian and regime “conventional” bombing — including with incendiary, thermobaric, and cluster munitions — that have killed many tens of thousands of civilians. Since April 7, that bombing has escalated with no response from Washington.

The resumption of indirect talks from late January between the regime and the opposition, in Astana and Geneva, have brought little progress. President Assad has rejected any transitional process in which he leaves power, and the regime has also not responded to opposition conditions for the release of political detainees and an end to sieges. Instead, Damascus — with Russian and Iranian assistance — has pressed for more arrangements for the removal of rebels and residents from opposition areas.

But De Mistura insisted there had been an advance, since technical talks in Iran, with “some type of movement regarding the issue of detainees…and on possible issues related to demining as well”. www.mesop.de