Kerry : Fall of Aleppo Won’t End War in Syria
US Secretary of State John Kerry
Brussels, 07 Rabi’ul Awwal 143/07 December 2016 (MINA) – US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Tuesday that even if Aleppo falls at the hands of the Assad regime the conflict in Syria will not end.
“Even if it did fall, Aleppo will not change the fundamental underlying complexity of this war. If Assad takes over Aleppo, is the war going to end? No. Will he have solved the political challenge of bringing people together to unite the country? No,” Kerry quoted by KUNA as telling a press conference after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers tonight.
He noted that there has been discussion of trying to move people out in order to save Aleppo.
“But until this moment, there has not been an agreement on how that would happen or how those people would move out or how they might be protected,” said Kerry in his final appearance at a NATO meeting.
“And so if you’re going to rebuild Syria, is Syria going to be rebuilt by Assad alone somehow, after Aleppo were to fall, if it fell? The answer is no. It’s going to take hundreds of billions of dollars, with the global community being willing to come together. And the global community will not be willing to come together to do anything about Aleppo unless there is a political settlement,” he said.
“So my hope is that this week in our continued conversation with the Russians we can get them to understand the imperative of getting to that table, having the negotiation, and of not inflaming passions more with the total destruction of Aleppo,” added Kerry.
The US official said he will see Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Hamburg, Germany, at the OSCE meeting.
“We are scheduled to meet, and we can have a conversation about whether or not we can actually find a better way forward at this moment in time,” he said.
He also noted that that the change of an administration in the United States “will not change the unwavering commitment of the United States to these ideals or to our NATO obligations.” (T/R07/R01)
Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)
