The Syrian crisis won’t end with settlement of the chemical weapon problem

By Vestnik Kavkaza

UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon plans to hold a meeting with Sergey Lavrov and John Kerry on September 28th and define the date of conducting the peace conference on Syria, Geneva-2. However, Russian experts are sure that it is a long way before the end of the Syrian crisis.

“If we take the Middle East as a region and the situation in Syria, there are a great number of traps,” the director of the Roosevelt Center for US Studies at the MSU, Yuri Rogulev, states. “Big countries can fall into these traps as well, including Russia and the US, which appear to be hostages of the processes happening in the Middle East in many cases. We need a sober view on things, the development of a certain approach which would show the countries what is next. It would be difficult to solve the problem without a perspective.”

According to Rogulev, “when we speak about resolution of the conflict, we should think about the interests of the countries neighboring Syria, about involvement of other states. A lot of work from both Russia and the United States will be needed. Russia is a kind of a hostage of Bashar Assad. They say: “Russia is the main country which supports the regime for all two years.” But Russia doesn’t support the regime of Bashar Assad. We stand for certain principles of settlement of the conflict. This is an advantage for a situation with chemical weapons, as Russia has more opportunities to influence Bashar Assad. However, influence on all sides of the conflict is needed, not only in Syria, but also outside Syria. I mean the position of Israel, the position of Turkey, the position of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, and all the processes in North Africa, the Arab states, Iran, the Iranian nuclear problem – it is a knot of problems and contradictions and we should be very careful. And future Russian-American steps should be very thoughtful toward Syria and the region in general.”

The director of the Institute of Strategic Appraisals, Sergey Oznobishchev, says: “The central question of the story is: What will happen tomorrow with Syria? How to achieve a political settlement there? After all, the most important thing is how it all began. How to stop civil strife and fratricidal war, when both the opposition and pro-government forces and ordinary people are involved in this mess, and people perish. So far, very little headway has been made in this direction. Should we keep and maintain the current leader? How to organize the transition process? How to create a government of national reconciliation, as has been mentioned? How to re-start the Geneva process, which works out the political side of the agreement? All this for now remains on the agenda.”

According to Oznobishchev, “Moscow and Washington have special obligations and special opportunities to strengthen international security, if only because they have the largest military potentials, potentials of weapons of mass destruction. They should act together in that direction, go hand-in-hand. As for the positions of other individual countries, France or Germany, these positions, we understand, are largely dictated by the internal political situation. Under the previous president of France, probably, the situation would have been different. Relations between the Russian and French presidents then were quite close, and this is very important. In fact, in his article today in the New York Times, Putin said that his personal human relationship with Obama is good and is improving, that they understand each other. In these relationships, when this thread is lost, everything becomes more difficult. With Hollande, Putin, in my opinion, is not succeeding, there are a lot of differences on this and that issue. Well, in this case the United States maybe could convince France to enter into the general track of decision-making, if such decisions will be made, and I hope I will start, because the whole situation is returning to the UN Security Council. This is important. As for Germany, it seems to me that it is fully capable of compromising today, to maintain a reasonable dialogue. And the relationship is such that both Putin and Merkel, in my opinion, can easily talk on the phone about the details and reach agreement.”