News / Interviews

Kerry’s Plan B for Syria may be a bluff: Analyst

Friday, 26 February 2016 2:14 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 26 February 2016 2:13 PM ]

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (L) and US Secretary of State John Kerry meet for diplomatic talks on February 11, 2016 in Munich, southern Germany. (AFP photo)

Press TV has interviewed Mark Sleboda, an international relations and security analyst in Moscow, about Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissing speculation about an alternative plan for a political settlement of the Syria crisis.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Russia says there is no Plan B; the US says there is a Plan B, where do you sit on this?

Seboda: Well obviously Kerry’s statements are extremely bellicose and belligerent. They have to be taken and indeed they have been understood even by the Western press as a direct threat to partition Syria if the US does not get what it expects out of these ceasefire terms and it has to be said that these threats first of all violate the whole spirit of international law and the UN Charter but they also directly contradict statements that the US has signed repeatedly from Geneva, to Vienna, to the Munich documents and numerous Security Council [resolutions] reaffirming the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Syria. So the US is putting itself in extremely dubious grounds here by asserting that this is even a possibility that they are considering.

Press TV: So in the hypothetical situation of a partitioning of Syria, who would that benefit?

Seboda: Well first and foremost it would of course benefit the various Jihadi factions, the so-called moderate rebels that are supported by the United States. It would benefit ISIS (Daesh), Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda. It would also benefit of course Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Turkey, some of the primary non-Western supporters of this Islamist insurgency in Syria.

It has to be said though that all this has to be taken with a grain of salt and this very much may well be a bluff. It is very unlikely the United States would be willing to commit troops or air power to directly contest Russia within Syria and the ability of Turkey whose General Chief of Staff has suggested that he will not obey orders from Erdogan without approval from the Security Council or Saudi Arabia that is already military tied down in an invasion in Yemen against the poorest country in the Middle East, a quagmire that is losing badly, it really questions how much real bark there is or how much bite there is behind this bark.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk