William Tucker
Chief Corespondent for In Homeland Security
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov today to discuss the situation in Syria. The two parties have agreed to hold another international conference aimed at continuing the dialog from the Action Group for Syria meeting last summer. Though this sounds like a promising idea, both the Syrian regime and several rebel factions have balked at the proposed roadmap for Syria’s political future. This essentially appears to be a diplomatic agreement based up the lowest common denominator of U.S. and Russian interests. To be quite frank, Washington and Moscow are so far apart on numerous issues – including Syria – that the best agreement the parties could conceive was simply another meeting. To be sure, the current UN investigation of chemical weapons use in Syria, nor the 70,000-plus dead as a result of the civil war just weren’t enough to help bridge the gap between the two nations. Though both parties understand that the humanitarian crisis must be alleviated, neither nation is willing to give up its own interests to address the issue because of the long term implications. Russia and the U.S. are due to meet at the end of May, and we’ll have to wait to see what, if anything, is accomplished.
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