Hezbollah Threatens Israel Over Syria Strikes
Published: May 9, 2013
(Page 2 of 2)
But he said he had made clear to Russian leaders during his visit to Moscow earlier this week, where the agreement on peace talks was reached, that the United States “would prefer that Russia not supply assistance” to Syria’s air defenses because of the threat they posed to the region, particularly Israel.
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In addition to meetings with Italy’s new prime minister and foreign minister, Mr. Kerry discussed Syria with Jordan’s foreign minister, Nasser Judeh, pledging $100 million in new humanitarian assistance, nearly half of it to help Jordan deal with a flood of refugees from the fighting. He also spoke by telephone with the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, in an effort to start negotiations.
Mr. Kerry suggested that the United Nations would soon announce a date for talks to begin, presumably in Geneva, where an effort to create a framework for a negotiated settlement began last year but stalled.
In Paris, the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said in an interview with Le Monde that France favored the diplomatic solution advanced by Mr. Kerry, but that it also wants to rethink the European Union arms embargo in order to help the Syrian rebels.
Mr. Fabius also proposed that the United Nations should declare Syria’s Islamist Nusra Front a terrorist organization to differentiate it from other Syrian rebel groups.
The United Nations Security Council has already looked informally at whether to impose sanctions on the Nusra Front after it pledged allegiance last month to Al Qaeda. The State Department designated Nusra a terrorist organization in December, but the group has grown stronger since then. It is considered one of the Syrian insurgency’s most effective fighting forces.
Senior French officials said that the French position has become noticeably more cautious in the last few weeks, especially since the resignation last month of Moaz al-Khatib, the leader of the main political opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, amid political infighting.
French officials would like to see the opposition’s main armed wing, the Free Syrian Army, become more centralized and come under the command of a civilian hierarchy before moving ahead with arms transfers, the officials said.
At the United Nations, where a deadlock in the Security Council has frozen any concrete action on Syria, Qatar and other supporters of the Syrian opposition began circulating a draft General Assembly resolution on Thursday strongly condemning the Assad government and calling for a political transition.
Such resolutions are nonbinding, but its backers hope a significant vote supporting the measure in the 193-member assembly as early as next week will put added pressure on Damascus to end the fighting.
In a related development, the United Nations said Thursday that Lakhdar Brahimi, the special Syria envoy for both the United Nations and the Arab League, had agreed to Mr. Ban’s request to stay on the job.
Mr. Brahimi had been expected to resign in frustration over the lack of progress on the political track. But he apparently changed his mind after the Russian-American agreement to convene a peace conference — something Mr. Brahimi had long sought.
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