US, Russia Disagree on Who's Thwarting Aid for Aleppo.
Press. voanews.com.
Officials in
Washington and Moscow on Friday expressed a desire to extend their week-old
cease-fire pact for Syria and confirmed aid deliveries had not yet begun, but
agreed on little else concerning the tenuous situation in the war-torn country.
Forty trucks carrying desperately needed relief for the divided city of Aleppo
were idling at a special customs checkpoint at the Turkish border, and the U.S.
blamed the Syrian government for the holdup.
"Those
trucks should be going in and that aid should be getting delivered with or
without the arrangement that was arrived at in Geneva," State Department
spokesman John Kirby said. "It is the [Syrian] regime that is blocking the
movement." U.N. officials said conditions were not yet safe for the
vehicles to cross into Syria.
'Whole world is
watching'
"We know
that there's at least a quarter of a million people in eastern Aleppo who are
... in need of some kind of aid," said Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the
U.N. humanitarian office. We are as ready to go as we can possibly be. ... It's
highly frustrating. We know the whole world is watching."
Syrian
government troops had withdrawn from Aleppo but were then fired upon by rebels,
prompting the soldiers to return to their previous positions, according to
Russian officials, who also blamed Washington for not using its influence to
quell cease-fire violations by rebel groups.
The Americans
have a different view, with Secretary of State John Kerry expressing concern in
a Friday phone call to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov "about the
repeated and unacceptable delays of humanitarian aid," according to a
State Department statement.
Meanwhile, in
New York, the U.N. Security Council canceled a meeting on Syria that was
scheduled for late Friday. The cancellation came at the request of the U.S. and
Russia.
Under the
cease-fire agreement Kerry and Lavrov announced in Geneva a week ago,
hostilities should have paused Monday (the start of the Muslim holiday of Eid
al-Adha) to clear the way for humanitarian aid to flow unhindered into Syria.
Starting next Monday — if those conditions are met — the United States and
Russia are to begin joint coordination of airstrikes against the Islamic State
and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly known as the al-Nusra Front, which are not
parties to the truce.
U.S. officials
on Friday wouldn't speculate about what would happen next week if the aid
shipments do not begin by then. If the deal does falter, Kirby told reporters
"we're back to regrettably where we have so long been: innocent civilians
being barrel-bombed and gassed." Over the last several days, there have
been acts of violence "committed by all sides," according to Kirby.
The Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights said U.S. special forces — believed to be only
five or six personnel — entered the Syrian town of al-Rai on Friday to
coordinate airstrikes against Islamic State militants. Video posted on the
internet purportedly of those forces leaving the town showed fighters of the
U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army chanting anti-American slogans and hurling
insults, adding that they would not fight alongside the Americans.
The U.S. Defense
Department has previously acknowledged its special operations teams are
accompanying Turkish and some Syrian opposition armed personnel in the area and
further east, near Jarablus. Meanwhile, Turkish-backed rebels, according to
Ankara, have been involved in deadly clashes with IS in northern Syria with the
support of Turkish warplanes and tanks.
Political
transition
It is hoped that
the truce forged by the United States and Russia will clear the way for
negotiations about a political transition in Syria. But rebel leaders say they
expect the cease-fire to collapse and do not believe Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad — or his foreign backers, Russia and Iran — want to negotiate a
political settlement.
"The armed
groups on the ground are still discussing what they should do about the
cease-fire," General Salim Idris, former chief of the staff of the Free
Syrian Army, told VOA. VOA's Jamie Dettmer contributed to this report from
Gaziantep, Turkey.
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