US Secretary of State John Kerry at a press conference in London in September after talks at Britain™s Foreign & Commonwealth Office on Syria
US Secretary of State John Kerry has said he will travel to London next week for talks with supporters of foreign-backed Syrian opposition groups before the forthcoming talks in Geneva on the ongoing crisis in the Middle Eastern country.
œI’ll have meetings next Tuesday in London with the support group of the opposition,” Kerry said Thursday in an interview with National Public Radio. œWe’re working towards this Geneva conference, not that we know what the outcome is.”
Kerry, who reached an agreement last month with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov over Syria™s chemical weapons as the administration of President Barack Obama was calling for military strikes against Syria, said he believed that œthere is no military solution, absolutely not” to the Syrian conflict.
œThere is only a continued rate of destruction and creation of a humanitarian catastrophe for everybody in the region if the fighting continues,” Kerry added.
The forthcoming talks in Geneva are seen as a chance to find a political solution to the Syrian crisis.
According to AFP, Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil has said that the talks could take place “November 23-24.”
This comes as the so-called Syrian National Council (SNC), which is the biggest bloc within the foreign-sponsored Syrian opposition coalition, said last week that it would not join the forthcoming talks and would quit the coalition if it partakes in the conference.
Syria has been gripped by deadly unrest since 2011. Reports indicate that the Western powers and their regional allies — especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey — are supporting the militants operating inside the country.
According to the United Nations, more than 100,000 people have been killed and millions displaced in the violence.
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