Syria truce must be viewed with guarded optimism: Analyst

The Syrian government has approved a truce deal announced by Russia and the United States to find a political solution to the crisis in Syria.

Press TV has interviewed George Jabour, president of the Syrian UN Associations, on the matter.

Press TV: How do you feel about this deal?

Jabour: I feel better in the sense that we used to hear so many declarations especially from [Russian Foreign] Minister Lavrov about talks between him and Mr. Kerry and then the results were usually not quite comforting to us in Syria. We are witnessing the war. We are the victims of the war.

Now there is a ceremony of signing five documents and this makes their talks more official, more compulsory. Hopefully that this compromise that was reached after so much discussions between the two Presidents and the Secretary of State and the Foreign Minister, we hope that this compromise will be implemented, we hope that peace will return to Syria.  

My optimism is guarded optimism certainly because previous experiences were not encouraging. We hear about ceasefire and then we hear that the ceasefire was broken. Now we have more refined machinery for this. Hopefully it will work. We will start by 48 hours ceasefire, then 72 hours ceasefire, then a sort of mechanism for observing the violations, then there will be joint effort by the Russian Federation and the United States against the terrorist organizations namely al-Nursa and Daesh. Hopefully this will work but then we have to keep our optimism guarded, cautious optimism.  

Press TV: There are a lot of external actors obviously when it comes to the Syria crisis. Do you think that all of them in the complex web that exists between what is called by the West as the moderate opposition and of course the more obvious terrorist groups, that whole web and that whole mixture can be clarified going forward?  

Jabour: This is a very good question, very valid question. As a matter of fact I think that it would have been better if there were some more people, some more states that would sign the five documents.

We miss the signature of Turkey, of Saudi Arabia, of Iran but then we can also be optimistic by saying that the two superpowers were there and the two superpowers certainly can persuade their allies in the region to come forward by agreeing to this compromise. Russia has very good relations with Iran, America has very good relations with Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Qatar of course.

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

www.presstv.co.uk