US studying Moscow’s Syria deal

RELIEF AT LAST: First evacuations from Damascus rebel district begin -

Copenhagen: The United States is closely examining whether a Russia-brokered deal to establish safe zones in Syria can work in the long term, Pentagon chief Jim Mattis said.

“All wars eventually come to an end and we have been looking for a long time how to bring this one to an end,” Mattis told reporters ahead of his arrival in Denmark on Monday.

“So we will look at the proposal, see if it can work,” Mattis added.

Experts are sceptical about last Thursday’s deal because neither the Syrian government nor the rebels were direct signatories and the opposition offered only a lukewarm reaction.

Washington has given the deal an extremely cautious welcome, citing concerns about a guarantor even as it expressed hope the agreement could set the stage for a later settlement.

“Does this proposal have a hope for ending this war — we’ll have to look at it. The devil is always in the details, so we are going to have to look at the details, see if we can work them out, see if we think they are going to be effective,” Mattis said.

Mattis is in Copenhagen for a meeting of the main members of the coalition fighting the IS group in Iraq and Syria. He added that “we owe it” to the people of Syria to carefully study the proposals.

The United States was not part of the deal by government backers Russia and Iran, and rebel supporter Turkey.

However, a US assistant secretary of state monitored the talks in the Kazakh capital Astana, Mattis said.

The United States takes part in separate peace talks under a UN mandate in Geneva, where the rivals have been deadlocked on key issues.

Several ceasefires have been agreed since Syria’s conflict broke out in 2011, but they have failed to permanently stem the fighting. The new deal would initially last six months but could be extended by the guarantors.

It does not specify that the safe zones take effect immediately, but gives the three guarantor states two weeks to form working groups to delineate them and then until June 4 to come up with definitive boundaries.

Meanwhile, Syrian rebels and their families begin evacuating from a district of the capital Damascus for the first time on Monday, bringing the government closer to recapturing all of the city.

The deal to evacuate Barzeh district mirrors similar agreements for opposition-held territory elsewhere in the country, allowing fighters safe passage in exchange for surrender.

“Armed men and some of their families have begun leaving Barzeh on 40 buses heading towards northern Syria,” state television said.

It added that the evacuation would continue for five days, but that rebel fighters who chose to stay could do so if they register with the government.

The channel did not specify how many people were expected to leave, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said up to 1,500 people -- mostly rebels -- would leave Barzeh today and head to the northwest province of Idlib.

The evacuation deal was struck late on Sunday night, and dozens of people had gathered in Barzeh from the morning. An AFP photographer saw rebel fighters carrying light weapons looking on as children and women in brightly-coloured headscarves pulled shabby suitcases and duffel bags.

A source from the pro-government National Defence Forces said rebel fighters would be allowed to take their “personal weapons” with them.

Negotiations were ongoing for a similar deal in the district of Qabun, in Damascus’s northeast, which forces loyal to President Bashar al Assad have been shelling heavily for weeks.

Speaking at a press conference in the capital, Foreign Minister Walid Muallem confirmed that the “reconciliation in Barzeh has begun.”

“We are working on Qabun and there is the Yarmuk camp, where talks are underway for the evacuation of armed groups,” he added. - Agencies