SECRETARY KERRY: Because we have been working continually together with our teams in Geneva
as well as with the Russians, and I want to report on where we are now.
We just announced a short time ago as part of our urgent efforts to try to de-escalate
the violence in Syria and reaffirm the cessation of hostilities, which is critical, that the
United States and Russia have now concluded arrangements with our teams late yesterday
evening to reaffirm a cessation of hostilities in Aleppo province, including Aleppo city
and its surrounding areas.
Now, this went into effect at midnight today – early today, midnight of this morning
– and local time in Syria.
And since then, we’ve seen an overall decrease in the violence in those areas, even though
there are some reports of continued fighting in some locations, which does not surprise
us because it only went into effect one minute after midnight, and we have to communicate
and we are working at that process of communication.
I had a conversation with Staffan de Mistura who was in Berlin earlier meeting with Dr.
Hijab, the head of the HNC, and we communicated directly to them what the status is so they
can communicate to the parties.
Now, to ensure that this continues in a stable – in a sustainable way, we are coordinating
closely with Russia to finalize the enhanced monitoring efforts of this renewed cessation.
As I said earlier this week in Geneva with Staffan de Mistura, that we and Russia have
agreed that there will be additional personnel, who already are together on the ground working
in Geneva, who will try to strengthen our ability in order to be able to enforce this
mechanism.
We’re also in very close contact with our partners, one of whom is standing to my right
now, and throughout Europe as we work to solidify this.
We expect all the parties to the cessation of hostilities to fully abide by the renewed
cessation in Aleppo.
That means the regime and the opposition alike.
And we also expect them to live by the cessation throughout the country, pursuant to the terms
that were arrived at and agreed upon in Munich in February of this year.
Now, we want to repeat that attacks on Syria’s civilian population are never to be tolerated,
and we look to Russia as a co-chair of the International Syria Support Group to help
press – or not help, but to press since they have the strongest relationship, apparently,
with the regime – to press them for the regime’s compliance with this effort.
And the United States will do its part with respect to the opposition, as will all the
other members of the International Syria Support Group.
So following the regime’s overnight airstrikes against Eastern Ghouta, we welcome today’s
reaffirmation of the cessation in Eastern Ghouta for the next 48 hours.
And if we can get it done in the next 48 hours, obviously it is our hope to be able to extend
that, but we are testing this very carefully on a specifically timed basis.
As I said yesterday, as we work to get the cessation back on track, we also are continuing
to work to obtain the full, sustained humanitarian access to Syria which the Assad regime committed
to do.
And it’s important that they follow through on that commitment.
To date, the regime has consciously and unacceptably blocked food and medical supplies from getting
to people in desperate need, and I think it is clear that humanitarian organizations must
be allowed access to serve the people who are in need.
So we will continue to work to de-escalate the
violence all across Syria in hopes of being able to move back to the talks as soon as
people have a confidence that this is really taking hold, and that we have laid the groundwork
for the ability to be able to go back.
And we hope to have an International Syria Support Group meeting somewhere within the
next two weeks in order to help accelerate, facilitate the process.
Most importantly, we need to get to the discussion that every party agreed to regarding the Geneva
communique of 2012, and indeed, to have a transitioning governing body in Syria that
can begin to provide stability to the people of that beleaguered country.