Russia refuses to budge on Syria

Kerry’s Aleppo demand spurned

Members of the civil-defense group known as the White Helmets inspect cluster bombs Thursday in the Khan Sheikhoun neighborhood of Idlib, Syria. The White Helmets provided this photo.
Members of the civil-defense group known as the White Helmets inspect cluster bombs Thursday in the Khan Sheikhoun neighborhood of Idlib, Syria. The White Helmets provided this photo.

BEIRUT -- The Russian government vowed Thursday to continue its operations in Syria, dismissing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's threat to cut off talks if the bombardment of Aleppo continued.

"We have more than once suggested 48-hour pauses in order to ensure humanitarian access," Sergei Ryabkov, the deputy foreign minister of Russia, told reporters Thursday in Moscow. "But our American colleagues are totally fixated on demands of a seven-day pause for reasons that only they know."

Kerry told his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, on Wednesday that the United States would scrap plans for joint military action against jihadi targets unless the Russian and Syrian militaries stopped bombing the rebel-held districts of Aleppo, which was once Syria's largest city and its commercial center.

Kerry repeated those statements Thursday, saying the U.S. is "on the verge" of ending Syria talks with Russia.

Speaking at an event organized by The Atlantic magazine, Kerry said such discussions make no sense at a time when Russian and Syrian warplanes are bombing Aleppo, adding that the U.S. has no indication of Russia's "seriousness of purpose."

"We're on the verge of suspending the discussion because it's irrational in the context of the kind of bombing taking place," Kerry said.

He appeared to offer Russia another last chance, however. "It's one of those moments where we're going to have to pursue other alternatives for a period of time, barring some clearer indication by the warring parties that they're prepared to consider approaching this more effectively," Kerry said.

As many as 600 wounded people in the city cannot be treated adequately because of a shortage of drugs and medicines, the United Nations deputy special envoy for Syria, Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy, said Thursday in Geneva.

"There are now no more than 35 doctors covering a population of at least 275,000," he said.

Hundreds of people awaited medical evacuations, and there are food rations left for only one-quarter of the population in eastern Aleppo, he said. "The bombing must stop, civilians must be protected and the cessation of hostilities must be restored," Ramzy said.

The United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Stephen O'Brien, told the Security Council that Aleppo faces a "humanitarian catastrophe unlike any we have witnessed in Syria," with at least 320 civilians killed in the past seven days alone. The government has intensified its blockade on aid throughout the country, he said.

Kerry wants to revive a Sept. 9 cease-fire deal that fell apart after an airstrike that the United States said was aimed at jihadis but instead killed dozens of Syrian soldiers; an attack on a humanitarian aid convoy for which the United States blamed Russia despite Kremlin denials; and the relentless bombardment of rebel territory in Aleppo. Most of the rebels in Aleppo battling the government of President Bashar Assad are not connected to jihadi groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida.

Ryabkov suggested a 48-hour pause in fighting, an offer the Americans are likely to reject. U.S. officials have said that seven days is the minimum needed for a meaningful cease-fire.

"A seven-day pause is a time period that is quite sufficient for terrorist groups to take necessary steps in order to stock up on supplies, allow terrorists to rest and regroup forces," Ryabkov said. "It is as though the duration was specially chosen to tackle such tasks, and consequently, a seven-day period is unacceptable for us."

The Syrian opposition and its international backers counter that the pro-government forces are the ones that have used cease-fires to regroup.

"What Assad and Russia are doing in Aleppo is soul-shattering," the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, said Thursday.

Russia, she said, is no longer only supporting Syrian troops but also "fighting alongside the regime, bombing alongside the regime, exceeding in brutality what we have seen from the regime in the life of this war."

The Kremlin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, chided a State Department spokesman, John Kirby, who said on Wednesday that Russia had an interest in stopping extremist groups like the Islamic State because they could attack "Russian interests, perhaps even Russian cities." Peskov called the statement a "thinly disguised invitation to use terrorism as a weapon against Russia" and denounced what he called "the current American administration's de facto support for terrorism."

Appeal to U.N.

Speaking to the Security Council via video link from Geneva, O'Brien painted a grim picture of the conditions in the war-racked eastern part of the city, where at least 320 civilians including 100 children have been killed in the past week. An additional 765 have been wounded.

O'Brien's report noted that the U.N. now calculates that 861,200 Syrians are trapped in sieges -- a nearly 50 percent increase from the previous estimate of 586,200. The new figure reflects the government's protracted blockade around eastern Aleppo, where an estimated 250,000 people or more live.

The U.N. embarked on an ambitious plan early this year to establish regular humanitarian access to Syrians living under various sieges but was reportedly stymied by the government as well as a restrictive covenant between rebels and the government to limit assistance to 60,000 of the most distressed, divided among four towns. At that time, a total of 487,000 Syrians were estimated to be living under siege.

O'Brien said certain Security Council members bore responsibility for global inaction on Syria and ended his address saying it was time to "place the blame."

In Aleppo, rescue crews were working for the third-straight day to clear the rubble and search for survivors of presumed Russian or Syrian government airstrikes on the eastern al-Shaar and al-Mashhad neighborhoods that flattened residential buildings and killed at least 23 civilians, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Germany and Turkey condemned what they called "blatant breaches of international humanitarian law" and renewed calls for a cease-fire.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who spoke by phone Thursday, said Russia, the Syrian government's chief backer on the international stage, bears "special responsibility to calm the violence and thereby give any chance to a political process," according to a statement released by Merkel's office.

Meanwhile, airstrikes destroyed the last remaining bakery in Anadan, an opposition town north of Aleppo, activists said.

Adnan Medlej, an activist from Anadan, said the bakery was hit shortly after it distributed bread to the town's remaining 2,000 residents and others in nearby villages. After intense bombings that devastated the town's infrastructure, most residents have fled to other areas in rural Aleppo province.

A video shot by Medlej shows the bakery destroyed and a crater outside, with water leaking and walls scorched.

On Wednesday, government shelling near a bread distribution center in Aleppo city killed six people.

Government forces again seized the Handarat neighborhood along the contested city's northern flank, forcing rebels to withdraw farther from a crucial supply route to the city's east, the Castello Road, pro-government media and observers said. A government blockade of the road has kept the opposition-run east under siege since mid-July, with the exception of a monthlong period where rebels broke through the government's southern line. The neighborhood has changed hands multiple times int he past week; government forces captured Handarat on Saturday, only to surrender it again Sunday.

Senator: No Plan B

In Washington, a senior U.S. State Department official sought to assure skeptical lawmakers that Russia is at risk of becoming mired in Syria if the civil war rages on.

As members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee demanded to know what "Plan B" in Syria is, Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday described the conflict as a trap that Russia doesn't want to get caught in.

"The leverage is the consequences for Russia of being stuck in a quagmire that is going to have a number of profoundly negative effects," Blinken said. Among them, he said, is that Russia will be seen throughout the world as complicit with Assad as well as with Hezbollah and Iran "in the slaughter of Sunni Muslims," the country's largest religious group.

The committee's Republican chairman, Bob Corker of Tennessee, assailed President Barack Obama and his administration for refusing to take the necessary steps to get humanitarian aid into Syria and to deter Assad's military forces from targeting civilians.

There is an "unwillingness to roll up sleeves and deal with the tough issues that we have to deal with," Corker said. "There is no Plan B. There never has been a Plan B."

Blinken said "we also are actively considering other options" at Obama's direction for ending the civil war and he would share them with Congress once the deliberations are complete.

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., pressed Blinken to explain what the U.S. is doing to persuade Russia to change its approach in Syria. "Why are we still engaged in a conversation in which we have a 'partner' that continues to undermine our purposes in Syria?" Menendez asked.

Blinken said Russia "has a profound incentive" to find ways out. Russia escalated its involvement in Syria's civil war because it feared losing its only foothold in the Middle East, he said. But if the war escalates and more weaponry pours into the country, Russia will be left propping up Assad in an increasingly smaller part of Syria. A bad situation, he said, will have gotten worse for Russia.

Russia is "now in a position of having gotten in, it's very, very hard to get out because Assad cannot win," Blinken said. "They can prevent him from losing, but he cannot win," he said.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., urged Blinken to settle quickly on new, viable options for ending the war.

"Despite the best intentions, our policies in Syria have contributed to where we are today," she said. "The current effort is not working."

Information for this article was contributed by Anne Barnard, Sewell Chan, Yara Bishara, Nick Cumming-Bruce, Neil MacFarquhar and Hwaida Saad of The New York Times and by Philip Issa, James Heintz, Bradley Klapper and Richard Lardner of The Associated Press.

A Section on 09/30/2016

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