In televised comments, Syrian President Bashar Assad expressed doubt about the chances of a ceasefire getting into place later this week, as scheduled under last week’s Munich deal, saying he doesn’t believe it would be possible to get a full ceasefire together that quickly.
Assad says to him a full ceasefire would also mean halting the movement of weapons among “terrorist” factions, along with those groups, who he defined as all rebels, strengthening their position anywhere in Syria. He said such moves would not be allowed.
Assad also said that the Munich deal left too many questions unanswered, including who is going to hold the rebels to account in complying with the deal, and what is supposed to happen when rebel groups reject the deal and go back on the offensive.
The Munich deal appears to have largely come from the international community without much input from anyone within Syria, and there seem to be considerable doubts on all sides that the end of the week will see anything more than a token effort.
That’s not necessarily a disaster, as many ceasefires require multiple tries before they really take hold, but the diplomatic hot-button issue of Syria is likely to see any failed ceasefire followed by a lot of finger-pointing and international escalation of rhetoric.
In all honestly Assad would be foolish to believe that the ceasefire will not be used against him, one way or another. Weapons sales will continue unabated and it will only give time for them to consolidate or for the Sunni nations to invade under the umbrella of fighting ISIS. I said the same think in the first few months of this war. He made a huge mistake for not moving more strongly then and allowing the opposition time to get arms and training. If he had put down this revolt (invasion) in the first few months like his Father did it would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Now we stand on the edge of WWIII. What a mess our foreign policy has created and nobody will be held accountable for it either. The worst part is watching the so called anti-war left line up around Killary who has more to do with this than any other person around. Unreal that Trump would be the only one with a policy that makes any sense at all.
I must agree. I’ve never understood why the US should care whether Sunni or Shia terrorists run Syria, or indeed Iraq. I’ve always felt that, if you’re going to involve yourself in a war, you should first ask whether you can win it, and next whether, even if you did, it’d be in your interests. Most wars don’t pass those two tests.
Only reason America/Saudis/Jordan/Turkey/UK wants a ceasefire is to get the paid mercenaries safely out of Syria. Just imagine after they get rounded up/paraded and found to be Americans?