Russia and the US have agreed to a ceasefire in southwest Syria starting from midday today, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov said on Friday.
“Today in Amman, Russian, American and Jordanian experts ... agreed on a memorandum of understanding to create a de-
escalation zone” in the regions of Daraa, Quneitra and Sweida, Lavrov said.
Photo: AP
“There will be a ceasefire in this zone from midday Damascus time on July 9,” he said.
Lavrov was speaking at the G20 summit in Hamburg where he sat in on talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump — their first face-to-face meeting.
The agreement includes areas that have seen Israel retaliate for stray fire into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from clashes between Syrian forces and rebels.
Russia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has been engaged in talks this year with Turkey and Iran over four so-called de-escalation zones in the war-torn country.
However, negotiations in Astana this week failed to reach an agreement on the policing and precise borders of the zones.
Lavrov said the ceasefire to begin today would be supervised by Russian military police “in coordination with the Jordanians and Americans.”
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed the agreement.
Tillerson said it showed that the US and Russia were able to work together in Syria and that they would continue to do so.
“We had a very lengthy discussion regarding other areas in Syria that we can continue to work together on to de-escalate the areas and the violence, once we defeat ISIS,” he said using an acronym for the Islamic State group.
Tillerson said they would also “work together towards a political process that will secure the future of the Syrian people.”
In Washington, a senior US Department of State official briefed reporters about the ceasefire, saying the impulse for the move came from Washington and from Moscow.
“If there’s going to be a resolution of the conflict in Syria, we both need to somehow be involved in it,” the official said. “The Russians are heavily invested in the conflict. We have an interest in finding an end to it — in ending the misery, in ending the violence, in ending the refugee flows and the radicalization that emerges from it.”
The US has led a multinational coalition since 2014 battling Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq.
Jordan said it was party to what it called a “tripartite agreement” with the US and Russia.
“A ceasefire will take place along a line of contact agreed upon between the Syrian government forces and associated troops on one side and rebels on the other,” Jordanian government spokesman Mohammed Momani said.
“The three nations voiced their commitment to working on a political solution” based on UN-backed talks and UN Security Council Resolution 2254, he said, quoted by the Petra news agency.
British Secretary of Defense Michael Fallon was skeptical that the ceasefire would hold, given the string of failures in the past.
“We welcome any ceasefire, but let’s see it; let’s see the results on where these safety zones are proposed,” Fallon told a Washington think tank. “Let’s not have the civilian population misled. If they can be properly enforced then they are thoroughly welcome, and can then get in the United Nations humanitarian aid that was promised.”
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