Davos: There is no military solution to the civil war in Syria and all parties need to recognise that a future interim government in Syria cannot include Bashar Al Assad whose terrible acts have ensured that he can never regain any legitimacy, said US Secretary of State John Kerry at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Talking on the same stage where Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani made a remarkably conciliatory speech the previous day, Kerry emphasised that the nuclear talks with Iran needed action from Iran and that any results would not be based on trust but on rigorous testing.
Kerry rounded on the critics of the current US drive to find a settlement between Palestine and Israel, pointing out that the demographic forces offer Israel no time to delay in making peace. He also gave new details of how the US military has been working with the Israelis and Palestinians to build new security structures for the future two states.
Al Assad
Kerry launched an extraordinary attack on Al Assad’s record the day before the government and opposition were finally due to start face to face talks in Montreau, which seek to find a way forward based on the Geneva communiqué which would put in place a transitional government with full executive authority by mutual consent of government and opposition.
Kerry pointed out that Al Assad’s terrible acts have both removed his legitimacy to be in power, but also made it impossible for the opposition to deal with him. He referred to “this week’s terrible new evidence of torture at the hands of the Al Assad regime”, repeating that “your objective is to have peace, this one man must step aside in favor of peace and of his nation. You can never achieve stability until he is gone”.
Kerry repeated that “Al Assad cannot be part of the future of Syria because of the extraordinary havoc that he has wreaked on his own people. A man who has killed university students and doctors with Scud missiles; a man who has gassed his own people in the dead of night – families sleeping, women, children, grandparents; a man who has unleashed extraordinary force of artillery and barrel bombs against civilians against the laws of warfare. Al Assad will never have or be able to earn back the legitimacy to bring that country back together.”
Rouhani
Iran now has to meet the tough requirements of full transparency, like any other nation that has a peaceful nuclear programme, said Kerry, adding that “when Rouhani said the previous day that Iran has no intention of building a nuclear weapon, the words themselves are meaningless unless actions are taken to give them meaning”.
“If you are serious about a peaceful program, it is not hard to prove to the world that your program is peaceful. A country with a peaceful nuclear programme does not need to build enrichment facilities in the cover of darkness in the depth of a mountain. It doesn’t need a heavy water reactor designed to produce weapons-grade plutonium, like the one at Arak.” “It has no reason to fear intrusive monitoring and verification. And it should have no problem resolving outstanding issues with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
This is true for every country in the world with an exclusively peaceful nuclear program. This is the tough but reasonable standard to which Iran must also be held,” said Kerry.
Palestine and Israel
Kerry said that the outline of a final settlement in Palestine and Israel is clear to everyone, and the challenge is how to get the governments to move from their present impasse to the endgame.
“The truth is that after decades of struggling with this conflict, we all know what the endgame looks like,” said Kerry. “An independent state for Palestinians wherever they may be; security arrangements for Israel that leave it more secure, not less; a full, phased, final withdrawal of the Israeli army; a just and agreed solution to the Palestinian refugee problem; an end to the conflict and all claims; and mutual recognition of the nation-state of the Palestinian people and the nation-state of the Jewish people.”
He argued that neither side had the luxury of allowing time to be wasted. For Israel, the demographic dynamic will make it impossible to preserve its future as a democratic, Jewish state. Israel’s current relative security and prosperity doesn’t change the fact that the status quo cannot be sustained
And in Palestine failure will only embolden extremists and empower hardliners at the expense of the moderates who have been committed to a non-violent track to try to find peace, leaving Palestinians no closer to the sovereignty that they seek.
Military
Kerry gave some new details of how the US might be actively involved on the ground in supporting a security regime in the event of a settlement between Israel and Palestine. He said that General John Allen has been leading a comprehensive security dialogue the Israelis and Palestinians, as well as the Jordanians.
These plans include what Kerry described as “a layered defense that includes significantly strengthening the fences on both sides of the border, by deploying state-of-the-art technology, with a comprehensive programme of rigorous testing” in order to make the border safe for any type of conventional or unconventional threat, from individual terrorists or a conventional armed force.
