Thread by @Headsnipe011

Briefing on Syria

***Only posting statement, there is a Q&A in link***

@drawandstrike @HNIJohnMiller @catesduane @rising_serpent @Debradelai @GodlessNZ @almostjingo @tracybeanz @TheChiIIum @hfinch63 @HeshmatAlavi @ScheyChris

state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/20…

MR PALLADINO: Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for coming today. We have the Secretary of State’s Special Representative for Syria Engagement Ambassador James Jeffrey.

Ambassador Jeffrey will have a few opening comments, and then we will open it up to questions. I’ll call on questions. Thank you.

Ambassador Jeffrey.

AMBASSADOR JEFFREY: Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for coming. Let me start with our goals in Syria. The President laid them out very forcefully during his remarks in the UN General Assembly now almost two months ago.

What we’re looking for is the enduring defeat of ISIS, a reinvigorated & irreversible political process in Syria led by the Syrian people & facilitated by the UN, & de-escalation of the conflict that will include all Iranian-commanded forces departing from the entirety of Syria.

Before I get into how we’re going to carry out what is obviously an ambitious program but we think a very necessary one, let me describe the situation today. Other than fighting that we are leading with our SDF allies along the Euphrates River against ISIS,

there’s a relative ceasefire in Syria today, but the conflict is, alas, not over and there are still dangers. There are five outside forces – U.S., Iranian, Turkish, Russian, and at times Israeli Air Force units – involved in Syria for important,

or in several cases of the neighbors, existential interests. And as we saw with the recent shoot-down of a Russian IL-20 military aircraft, the danger of escalation is ever present, including between various national actors,

not just with subnational actors of which there are many there, including very dangerous groups such as Hizballah, ISIS, and al-Qaida, al-Nusrah offshoots.

The Syrian Government claims in its diplomatic contacts that it is winning, but it controls only about half-plus of the country’s territory, half of the population has fled its horrific rule, either as internally displaced persons or refugees across the border,

and the international community treats – most of it treats Syria as a pariah, and reconstruction funds are not going to flow either from us or from most of the rest of the international community...

that provides typically reconstruction funds until we see a great deal more progress on the agenda I’ll lay out.

So how do we move forward on this program? Taking the first goal, the enduring defeat of ISIS, we have a coalition of some 79 countries involved in the conflict, primarily with its focus on Iraq and Syria.

The last conventional fighting, as I said, is now along the Euphrates. In Syria it’s being led by America’s partners in this conflict, the Syrian Democratic Forces, as well as American military personnel.

The fight is continuing, and we hope that it will be over in a few months and that will be the last of ISIS’s terrain that it holds in a quasi-conventional way.

At the same time, military presence, while it is – has one mission, which is the defeat of ISIS, indirectly supports, through secondary effects, other goals. It, in its work with our partners, indirectly helps affect Iran’s malign activities,

and by our presence and by our commitment to security in Syria and in the region, we demonstrate an interest in achieving a political solution by the various ways that we have,

not just diplomatic but security and military, through economic tools and other assets that we have and that we’re deploying in this conflict.

We also think that you cannot have an enduring defeat of ISIS until you have fundamental change in the Syrian regime and fundamental change in Iran’s role in Syria, which contributed greatly to the rise of ISIS in the first place in 2013, 2014.

Our second goal is the de-escalation of the conflict, building on the ceasefires right now. Particularly important is the agreement that the Turks worked out with the Russians in –

over Idlib back at the end of September in which the Russians – again in a summit meeting with the leaders of France, Turkey, and Germany on the 27th of October – agreed would be a lasting ceasefire.

We’ll try to hold the Russians to their words. This is very important because from that flows the ability to build on these ceasefires that are somewhat ad hoc right now throughout the country into the sort of ceasefires called for in...

the relevant UN Resolution 2254 of December 2015 which calls for eventually a nationwide ceasefire and the UN special envoy for Syria to move forward on a whole procedure to ensure the maintenance of these ceasefires as an important step towards peace.

So that is the de-escalation component. Eventually that can lead to the withdrawal of all military forces that have entered since the beginning of the conflict in 2011. That would importantly include, as I mentioned earlier, a goal of all Iranian-commanded forces.

The third element in this is the political process. This, again, is under the UN Resolution 2254. And the first step right now is the convening under UN auspices a committee to begin work on the Syrian constitution.

This is a critical step towards reinvigorating the political process. Our goal – which, again, was supported by Russia, France, Germany, and Turkey, and agreed in the October 27th Istanbul communique – is to establish this constitutional committee by the end of the year.

We will hold Russia to account for its commitment to convene the constitutional committee by then, and we expect it to use its influence to bring the Damascus regime to the table.

Based upon these three elements, we hope to see a process, again, as outlined – as laid out in that UN Security Council resolution, moving forward to encourage all of the actors in Syria to achieve a basic security system that will end the fighting permanently,

produce a Syrian regime that is not as toxic as the current one is to its own people and to the neighborhood, and secure satisfactory guarantees for all of the players in and around Syria.

This conflict – as you all know, because you’ve been following it since 2011 – has had horrific consequences – first, for the Syrian people. The UN special envoy estimates over 400,000 killed, almost 200,000 incarcerated, almost 100,000 disappeared in one or another form,

and tens of thousands tortured. The conflict has given rise to ISIS and its huge wave of violence over Iraq, Syria, and on into Turkey and into Europe. It has also led to the huge outflow of refugees which has impacted three neighboring countries dramatically –

Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan – and had important negative political effects on Europe.

This is a conflict that for many reasons we all have to put every effort possible into resolving. That’s what this administration is committed to.

I’ll stop right there. Thank you very much.