A day after, the US State Secretary John Kerry threatened to start a ground operation in Syria if the country’s army does not observe the ceasefire regime.
The Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir took things a step further by telling a German newspaper that Bashar Assad will not be ruling Syria in the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, Assad himself told AFP news agency that his army is able to retake the whole country, adding that Damascus will continue to fight terrorism amid peace talks.
Radio Sputnik discussed these statements with geopolitical analyst and Senior Advisor at Gulf State Analytics think-tank — Theodore Karasik.
“Nearly all parties want to go after Daesh but at the same time there is still a debate going about who is an extremist and who isn’t. The Russians and Iranians position is different than the Western so this is going to continue throughout the rest of the next few weeks about sorting out who is who on the ground.”
Talking about Sergei Lavrov’s statement in which the foreign minister sees a 49% chance that a ceasefire in Syria will successfully be in place within one week, the analyst said, “Lavrov is on to an agreement that was made with Kerry and other major actors in this war. March 1st is the date for this ceasefire.”
Similarly the Geneva conference is in place working to establish a peace process in Syria but according to the analyst it is a little too early to make conclusions about the progress.
“At this juncture it is a little premature to say that everyone will agree to disagree. A number of speakers are opposed to each other and there will be further discussions between now and March 1st that are more behind the scenes because there needs to be some cohesive agreement which may be far-fetched,” Karasik concluded.
