Kerry, Lavrov reach ‘landmark’ Syria deal
September 10, 2016, 4:48 am

Early on Friday, it looked like the talks would collapse [Xinhua]

In eleventh hour talks in Geneva, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters they finally reached a much sought after breakthrough in negotiations to bring about a ceasefire in Syria and begin talks to end the crisis there.

“If this arrangement holds, then we will see a significant reduction in violence across Syria,” Kerry told reporters.

According to the agreement, both government forces and Islamist rebels will withdraw from a strategic Aleppo road where much fighting has occurred in the past few days.

This would then pave for the creation of a demilitarized zone that would facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid. Both Russia and the US pledged to pressure both sides in the conflict to stick to the tenets of the ceasefire.

Kerry said that Russia had agreed to impose a ban on air raids by Russian and Syrian fighter bombers in some areas of the country.

If the ceasefire holds for seven days, Russia and the US would then coordinate military planning to destroy the Islamic State and the Al-Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra militias.

“After the ceasefire regime will be in effect for seven days, we will establish an implementation centre, in which the military and the representatives of Russian and US intelligence will handle practical issues, separating terrorists and opposition,” Lavrov said.

The two sides also appear to have agreed on a key issue – “delineation of territories controlled by Al-Nusra and opposition groups in the area of active hostilities”.

“Today we have developed a significant, practical and concrete package of documents,” Lavrov said of the agreements reached between the two powers.

“We cannot make these documents public because they contain rather sensitive and serious information,” he added.

A previous ceasefire collapsed earlier in the year.

The BRICS Post with inputs from Agencies