UNITED NATIONS — Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday called for an immediate grounding of aircraft in what he described as “key areas’’ of Syria — including where aid is delivered — as a first step toward restoring a tattered cease-fire negotiated with Russia aimed at halting the war.
Speaking at a United Nations Security Council meeting on the Syria crisis, Kerry said that despite flagrant violations of the agreement — most notably the deadly airstrike that hit an aid convoy Monday night — restoring the cease-fire was the only option.
An airstrike in northern Syria on Wednesday killed four medics responding to an earlier bombing raid, the Associated Press reported.
The proposal from Kerry signaled that he was not only reasserting his Syria diplomacy but also intensifying it, even in the face of widespread doubts of success. The proposal reflected the Obama administration’s lack of alternatives for dealing with the convoluted conflict in Syria, which has left roughly a half-million people dead, helped create the worst refugee crisis since World War II, and will become part of President Obama’s legacy.
Despite the administration’s outrage over the use of banned chemical weapons and the systematic bombing of hospitals and other civilian areas by the forces of President Bashar Assad, Obama has maintained that military intervention by US ground forces is not a viable solution.
While the Americans have supported an array of Syrian opposition groups, some are intertwined with militant Islamist extremists that hate the United States and have no interest in a cease-fire — a contradiction that Russia has repeatedly raised with the United States.
With his new proposal, Kerry was also making what amounts to an 11th-hour effort to test Russian intentions in Syria, where the Kremlin has increasingly engaged militarily to defend Assad.
There was no immediate response to Kerry’s proposal from his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, who also spoke at the Security Council meeting, spending much of the time criticizing the United States.
But Lavrov’s spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, who was accompanying him, suggested later that the Russians were not enthused. “It’s about nothing,’’ she said. “That was a show.’’
US officials have said that Russian aircraft appeared to have been responsible for the assault on the aid convoy, based on intelligence including satellite monitoring.
Russia has denied responsibility but has offered varying explanations of what might have happened, including the possibility that US aircraft bombed the convoy. The United States has said none of its aircraft were involved.
The UN announced on Wednesday that it would resume aid deliveries as early as Thursday suspended after the convoy attack, the AP reported.
The cease-fire, which began on Sept. 12, reduced the overall level of violence. But there were numerous violations, particularly in the divided city of Aleppo and other parts of northern Syria held by insurgents opposed to Assad.
