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Clinton to Discuss Syrian Conflict With Russian Counterpart Clinton to Discuss Syrian Conflict With Russian Counterpart
(about 4 hours later)
DUBLIN — A new round of diplomacy on the conflict in Syria will begin on Thursday afternoon when Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy, hosts an unusual three-way meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov. DUBLIN — With the support of the United States, the United Nations special envoy on Syria is mounting a diplomatic push for a brokered agreement that would lead to the ouster of the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, and the installation of a transitional government.
The session, which is being held on the margins of a meeting on European security, comes amid reports of heightened activity at Syria’s chemical weapons sites and signs that Russia may be shifting its position on a political transition in Syria. The envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, convened an unusual three-way meeting on Thursday night at a Dublin hotel with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov.
“Secretary Clinton has accepted an invitation by U.N. Special Envoy Brahimi for a trilateral meeting on Syria this afternoon with Mr. Brahimi and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov,” a senior State Department official said Thursday morning. After the 40-minute meeting, Mr. Brahimi said his goal was to “put together a peace process” that would build on discussions that the United States and Russia had in June but which quickly collapsed.
This is not the first time that American and Russian consultations have spurred hopes of a possible breakthrough. In June, Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Lavrov and the United Nations’s envoy on the Syrian crisis at the time, former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, appeared to be close to an agreement that a transitional government should be established and that President Bashar al-Assad give up power. Mr. Brahimi and senior American and Russian officials plan to meet again in several days to see if they can agree on specifics of a negotiating approach that might end the 20-month conflict, which has killed more than 40,000 Syrians.
But that seeming understanding quickly broke down, with American officials complaining privately that the Russian side had pulled back from the deal. A major sticking point, it later emerged, was the American insistence that the United Nations Security Council authorize steps to pressure Mr. Assad if he refused to go along under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, which could be used to authorize tougher economic sanctions and, in theory, the use of force. With Mr. Assad’s fortunes looking bleaker and persistent worries that the Syrian leader is considering using his chemical arsenal, the hope on the American side was that the Russians might throw their weight behind Mr. Brahimi’s effort.
It remained to be seen if the new round of negotiations would be more successful. “Events on the ground in Syria are accelerating, and we see that in many different ways,” Mrs. Clinton said before the meeting, alluding to reports on chemical weapons developments. “The pressure against the regime in and around Damascus appears to be increasing.”
On the one hand, the military situation on the ground appears to be shifting in the rebels’ favor. Some Russian officials reportedly no longer believe that Mr. Assad will succeed in holding on to power and may have a new interest in working out arrangements for a transition. The changing battlefield, some experts say, may have led to a softening of the Russian position. The United States is in a race to prevent the military developments in Syria from outpacing the nascent arrangements for a political transition. But daunting questions remain, including the possibility that the Russian position has not fundamentally shifted and the absence of any indication that Assad government loyalists and the Syrian opposition are interested in negotiating a transitional arrangement with each other.
A senior Turkish official said that after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey recently met in Istanbul that Moscow was “softening” its “political tone” and would look for ways of getting Mr. Assad to relinquish power. “The longer Syrian violence continues, the more extremists benefit,” the American ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, said in remarks at a Washington event organized by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a nongovernment group.
On the other hand, it was possible that Mr. Lavrov had, in effect, merely agreed to meet so that Russia could maintain influence over the discussions on Syria and find out what exactly Mr. Brahimi was prepared to propose. The goal of the United States is to cobble together an answer to the “day after” questions. That is, who would govern Syria if Mr. Assad were finally deposed? And how can the international community reduce the risk of a downward spiraling sectarian and ethnic bloodletting that might spill over Syria’s border and enable radical Islamists to emerge as a potent political force?
There were indications on Thursday that Russian officials see the positions of Washington and Moscow on Syria moving slightly closer. Each of the several elements to the American strategy is challenging in its own right, and they require synchronization in the weeks ahead.
Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov of Russia expressed satisfaction in a Twitter message that the United States was moving to designate Al Nusra Front, a Syrian opposition group seen by American experts as linked to Al Qaeda, as an international terrorist organization. The United States is trying to shape and broaden the Syrian opposition so that it can play a major role in a political transition should Mr. Assad be driven from power. Mrs. Clinton has hinted that the United States will recognize the Syrian opposition as the legitimate political representative of the Syrian people at a meeting next week in Marrakesh, Morocco — assuming that the opposition continues to flesh out its organization and political structure.
The aim of the American move, which is expected soon, would be to isolate radical foes of the Assad government. Britain, France, Turkey and the Gulf Cooperation Council have already formally recognized the group.
With the rebels making gains on the ground, American officials have been trying to ensure that military developments do not outpace political arrangements for a possible transition. American officials have hinted that the United States would upgrade relations with the Syria opposition, possibly to formal recognition, if the coalition made progress on a political structure by the time of a meeting of the so-called Friends of Syria in Morocco. Recognition by the United States would be more than symbolic. The hope is that the group becomes a mechanism for channeling aid inside Syria and governing territory that it liberates from the Assad government.
But emerging policy on the Al Nusra Front also acknowledges Russia’s longstanding argument that the Syrian opposition includes radical jihadists. Mr. Gatilov said that the American step “reflects understanding of the danger of escalating terrorist activity in Syria.” “For the first time, there is a national opposition leadership,” Mr. Ford asserted in his appearance on Thursday. “Finally, people on the inside are working with those on the outside.”
A lawmaker with the dominant party, United Russia, told British legislators visiting Moscow that Russia saw Mr. Assad’s government struggling. “We think that the Syrian government should execute its functions,” he said, according to the Interfax news service. “But time shows that this task is beyond its strength.” The United States is also moving to designate the Nusra Front as an international terrorist organization, a move that has pros and cons since the group is made up of some of the most experienced fighters against the Assad government. But the United States wants to isolate the group politically from the rest of the opposition during a transition, because the front is seen by experts as affiliated with Al Qaeda.
Dimitri K. Simes, a Russia expert the Center for the National Interest in Washington, said, based on conversations with top officials, that Russia has indeed softened its position in light of military setbacks for the Assad government, and it is now understood that neither Mr. Assad nor his close associates would take a central role in a new government. Lastly, the Obama administration is trying to get the Russians on board to revive last June’s Geneva discussions with them and the United Nations that collapsed. The United States had thought those talks would lead to Mr. Assad’s relinquishing power and a United Nations Security Council resolution threatening economic sanctions and, in theory, military action under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, but the Russians later interpreted the talks differently.
However, he said Russia still wanted Iran to take part in negotiations about the transition. Iran’s presence, he said, would reassure Alawites, the Shiite Muslim minority of Mr. Assad and the core of the military, that they would be protected in the change of government. Forging a common American and Russian position, American officials believe, would leave Iran as the only major international supporter of the Assad government and encourage government loyalists to abandon Mr. Assad.
But even as there were hints that American and Russian stances might be converging, they differed sharply on human rights issues at the conference of the Organization for Security and Economic Cooperation in Europe, which began on Thursday. The focus of Thursday night’s talks, which took place on the margins of a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, was, Mr. Brahimi said, how “to put together a peace process that will be based on Geneva.”
Before the conference, Mrs. Clinton met in a tent outside the conference center with a group of 11 civil society representatives from seven countries, including Russia and nations from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. “We haven’t taken any sensational decisions,” he added. After the talks ended, Mr. Lavrov caught a flight to Moscow, presumably to brief President Vladimir V. Putin and plan Moscow’s next moves. Russia has cast its support for Mr. Assad as a principled stand against Western-led interventions in the region. But Russian officials now appear to be thinking more seriously about a transition.
Olga Zakharova, of Freedom Files in Russia, said she has worked for 20 years as a journalist and has seen her country “go from bad to worse.” A lawmaker with the dominant party, United Russia, told visiting British legislators on Thursday that although Russia wants to see the Assad government rule effectively, “time shows that this task is beyond its strength.”
“Even social media space is now shrinking,” she said, citing new restrictive laws on the use of the Internet. “We ask you not to leave Russia and other countries on their own,” she said. Russia is also eager to protect its strategic interests in Syria, fading traces of the Soviet Union’s strong foothold in the Middle East. In talks with opposition figures, officials have raised the issue of its modest naval facility at the port of Tartus, Russia’s last military base outside the former Soviet Union. It is almost certainly eager to continue its defense contracts with Damascus because their loss would hurt important players in the defense industry who have already been battered by the Arab uprisings.
The concern is no longer the environment, but the safety of colleagues, she said. Because Russia has few lines of communication with the rebel groups now in the forefront of fighting in Syria, as discussions of a transitional arrangement begin, it hopes to increase the role of the domestic opposition groups it has strong ties with, analysts here said.
Addressing the group, Mrs. Clinton said that she agreed there was a move to “re-Sovietize” the region. “We agree with your assessment that the space for civil society and the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms is shrinking and governments are becoming much more aggressive in trying to stifle dissent, prevent the free expression and exchange of views,” she said. And on Monday came the first official statement about helping Russian citizens leave Syria — a nearly impossible task, since tens of thousands of Russian women have married into Syrian families and are scattered with their children throughout the country.
Mrs. Clinton referred to the meeting with the human right activists and said that the future of the organization was in jeopardy because of actions taken by authoritarian members.

Michael R. Gordon reported from Dublin, and Ellen Barry from Moscow.

Mrs. Clinton also singled out human rights abuses in Belarus, election abuses in Ukraine and restrictions on free expression in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, among other nations.
On Russia, Mrs. Clinton criticized legislation that would require journalists and officials from nongovernment organizations to register as “foreign agents” if they received financing from abroad and other restrictions on civil society.
Mr. Lavrov repeated the Russian complaint about “unilateral approaches” that were interfering with the work of the organization.

Michael R. Gordon reported from Dublin, and Ellen Barry from Moscow. Anne Barnard contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.