Is the US-Russian understanding about Syria coming closer?

Written by Nasser Kandil,

It is certain that the first meeting at the level of the Summit between Washington and Moscow will be held in the next July at the sidelines of the Twentieth Summit which will be held in Hamburg in Germany as announced by  the Russian President Vladimir Putin , and it is certain that the summit will be similar to Cancun Summit in Mexico between the President Vladimir Putin and the President Barack Obama in 2012 it has put the bases of the understandings which the attempts to translate them in political formations remained continuous till the end of Obama’s  mandate. Their center was the work together to reach to a political solution in Syria that avoids the direct collision, but takes into consideration the two opposite red lines of the two parties, but when the formulation of the essence of that agreement becomes clear through the meetings of the Foreign Ministers of Russia and America Sergei Lavrov and John Kerry in Summer 2016 the US military and security organization has disrupted its implementation.

The titles of the US presidential understating which set in Cancun are still valid through the recognition of the mutual need to cooperate in Syria to prevent the turning of its crisis and the war in it into attrition and failure, and the recognition that raising the ceilings will lead to misunderstanding and the reach to the collision which represents greater losses than the supposed concessions to achieve the desired settlement. The political settlement which translated the need for a settlement in the understanding of Kerry-Lavrov is still valid; its essence is the US recognition that the way to avoid collision and the respect of the mutual interests and the opposite red lines is neither in the sharing of Syria, nor in the exchange of the privileges, but through going on in the road map entitled the participation in the war on terrorism, and the investment on rebuilding unified Syrian country that is subject to become stable after taking into consideration rehabilitation of the standards of sovereignty, and the resorting to the ballot boxes in the formation of the rule institutions outside the conditions and the prior conditions.

The military organization which disabled the implementation of Kerry-Lavrov understanding tried to block the adoption of the new US President Donald Trump of his electoral slogans of the priority of the war on ISIS and the intention to cooperate with Russia. It has relatively succeeded in making the private relation with Russia a charge that affects its second part as what has happened with the former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The military organization has succeeded in getting the full authorization from the President Trump to manage the war on ISISI on its way, but the facts of the field starting from the US-Turkish collision about the Kurdish file, and what the issue of Manbej, the direct connection between the Kurds who allied with Washington and the Syrian army, the requirements of the war of the war on ISIS, and the need to have understanding with Russia in every step and moment have imposed themselves. Thus was the historic meeting between the two chiefs of Staff of the Russian and the US armies.

It is not a coincidence that the current United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nicky Healy says and explains what the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is saying while answering a question about the role of the Syrian President in the political settlement that the Syrian people alone can determine the fate of the presidency of Syria, while Healy announced at the spokesman of her administration clearly that the departure of the Syrian President is no longer a US priority as it was at the era of the former administration and that the priorities have changed with the new administration. It is known that the US –Russian separation point which was difficult to be announced clearly by the administration of Obama is that that the priorities changed and the departure of the Syrian President is no longer a priority, despite the continuous attempts of John Kerry to send positions that call to accept the idea of considering the ballot boxes the only way to resolve the future of the Syrian presidency.

What is going on says that the understanding is getting mature and that Hamburg summit between Putin and Trump will put the record straight in an understanding that will draw a new road map that its features start to be shown through the recent US positions politically and in the field.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,