The United States will have to negotiate with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad for a political transition in Syria and is exploring ways to pressure him into agreeing to talks, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told CBS News in an interview.
Washington has long insisted that Mr. Assad must be replaced through a negotiated, political transition, but the rise of a common enemy, hard-line militant group Islamic State, appears to have slightly softened the West’s stance towards him.
In the interview broadcast on Sunday, Mr. Kerry did not repeat the standard U.S. line that Mr. Assad had lost all legitimacy and had to go. Syria’s civil war is now into its fifth year, with hundreds of thousands killed and millions of Syrians displaced.
“We have to negotiate in the end,” Mr. Kerry said. “We’ve always been willing to negotiate in the context of the Geneva I process,” he added, referring to a 2012 conference which called for a negotiated transition to end the conflict.
Mr. Kerry said the United States and other countries, which he did not name, were exploring ways to reignite the diplomatic process to end the conflict in Syria.
The United States led efforts to convene a U.N.-backed peace talks in Geneva last year between Western-backed Syrian opposition representatives and a government delegation. The talks collapsed after two rounds and no fresh talks have been scheduled.
