Eric Zuesse<\/p>\n
(RINF<\/a>) – The Syrian peace talks in Astana Khazakhstan, closed on Tuesday, January 24th, with a resounding repudiation of both ISIS and Al Nusra (Al Qaeda in Syria), in a statement by all four signatory nations \u2014 Syria, Russia, Iran, and Turkey \u2014 which also is an implicit repudiation of the longstanding American position on Syria.<\/p>\n The U.S. (which was not invited to these talks) had\u00a0demanded that the Syrian public be prohibited from being allowed to vote for Bashar al-Assad when elections for Syria\u2019s Presidency will next be held<\/a>.\u00a0The U.S. government and its allies have held\u00a0polls throughout Syria, all of which show that Assad is by far the preferred person, among all Syrians<\/a>, to lead the nation.\u00a0The declaration in Astana<\/a>\u00a0commits Syria unqualifiedly to democracy, and also opposes the breaking-up of Syria into\u00a0ethnic enclaves<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish \u2014 which the U.S. regime (such as in a recent Rand Corporation commentary<\/a>, but actually ever since at least 1957) had striven for (as the likeliest way\u00a0to enable the American aristocracy\u2019s allies, the royal families of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to pipeline their oil and gas through Syria into Europe<\/a>).<\/p>\n The four signatories stated their total:<\/p>\n commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity\u00a0and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic as a\u00a0multi-ethnic, multi-religious, non-sectarian and\u00a0democratic State, as confirmed by the UN Security\u00a0Council.<\/i><\/p>\n The statement also explicitly condemns Al Qaeda in Syria \u2014\u00a0the Obama Administration\u2019s chief \u201cboots on the ground\u201d organization fighting to overthrow and replace Syria\u2019s present government<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 and not only condemns ISIS\/ISIL\/Daesh, which even the U.S. regime condemned. This statement says that the signatories:<\/p>\n Reiterate their determination to fight jointly against\u00a0ISIL\/DAESH and Al-Nusra and to separate them from\u00a0armed opposition groups.<\/i><\/p>\n U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry\u2019s attempts to negotiate with Russia\u2019s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a path for ending the Syrian war all failed because of U.S. President Barack Obama\u2019s insistence upon there being no bombing of Al Nusra\u2019s forces in Syria<\/a>: that only ISIS\u2019s forces<\/i> could be bombed while peace negotiations proceeded with the other armed groups (\u201crebels\u201d).\u00a0Steve Chovanec aptly summarized Kerry\u2019s position in his negotiations with Lavrov: \u201cPlease Don\u2019t Attack Al-Qaeda\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Astana statement does not exclude participation in Syria\u2019s political future by the other rebel groups, some of which are fundamentalist Sunnis, and others of which are Kurds (who are\u00a0religiously diverse and generally secular<\/a>).<\/p>\n The statement asserts that the three governments:<\/p>\n Support the willingness of the armed opposition\u00a0groups to participate in the next round of\u00a0negotiations to be held between the government\u00a0and the opposition under the UN auspices in\u00a0Geneva as of February 8, 2017<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n The Syrian representative, Bashar al-Jaafari, was quite blunt in\u00a0saying at the end of the talks<\/a>: \u201cFor our part, we insisted on the issue of secularism\u00a0being one of the features of the coming Syrian state that\u00a0Syrians will agree upon, and our Iranian and Russian\u00a0friends agreed to that; only the Turkish delegation and\u00a0the armed groups\u2019 delegation rejected that.\u201d<\/p>\n Not even the Shiite fundamentalists, in Iran, were opposed to Syria\u2019s being a non-Sharia-law, secular and religiously diverse, country \u2014 only the U.S. and its allies (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the other fundamentalist-Sunni royal kingdoms) oppose that, and they seem now to be pretty clearly the losers in this.<\/p>\n It was a complete repudiation of the position taken by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, all of which aristocracies insisted upon victory for Al Nusra, and for the other jihadist groups that have been led by Al Nusra. But now, those groups will either need to separate themselves from Al Nusra, or else continue to be bombed by the coalition of Syria, Russia, Iran, and now also Turkey.<\/p>\n The new U.S. President, Donald Trump, has not yet made clear whether he will continue his predecessor\u2019s Syria-policy \u2014 or, if so, how it would be done.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eric Zuesse (RINF) – The Syrian peace talks in Astana Khazakhstan, closed on Tuesday, January 24th, with a resounding repudiation of both ISIS and Al Nusra (Al Qaeda in Syria), in a statement by all four signatory nations \u2014 Syria, Russia, Iran, and Turkey \u2014 which also is an implicit repudiation of the longstanding American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":197512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-291671","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}