David Owen: There is hope yet for us to broker a peace in Syria
Article published in The Standard 6 January, 2014
The conference on Syria planned for January 22 in Switzerland, convened by US Sec- retary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, is the one hope left for a quick ceasefire. Yet that will be very difficult to achieve.
On humanitarian grounds, a genuine, monitored ceasefire is imperative — but re- alpolitik, some will argue, means there can be no ceasefire until exhaustion or victory. Also, ceasefire lines have a tradition of becoming permanent, leading to something too close to de facto partition as in Bosnia-Herzegovina, or the emergence of a new country, as in Kosovo…
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