GENEVA, CBS/AP, February 3, 2016– U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement released late Wednesday that attacks by Syrian forces supported by Russian airstrikes against opposition-held areas have signaled that Syria intends to seek a military solution rather than a political one.
“The continued assault by Syrian regime forces — enabled by Russian airstrikes — against opposition-held areas, as well as regime and allied militias’ continued besiegement of hundreds of thousands of civilians, have clearly signaled the intention to seek a military solution rather than enable a political one,” Kerry said in a statement.

He added, “We call upon the regime and its supporters to halt their bombardment of opposition-held areas, especially in Aleppo, and to lift their besiegement of civilians.”
The peace talks in the Syrian civil war are taking a break. The fighting is not.
U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura announced Wednesday there would be a “temporary pause” in the indirect peace talks between the government and opposition, saying the process will resume Feb. 25.
In a statement later in the day, de Mistura’s office said the talks would take a “recess” by the end of Friday and would resume “no later than 25 February, and possibly much earlier.”
The delay reflects the rocky start of the talks Monday in which neither the government nor the opposition even acknowledged that the negotiations had officially begun.
The conflict that began in March 2011 has killed at least 250,000 people, displaced 11 million and given an opening for the Islamic State group to seize large parts of the country from forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.
The last round of talks broke down in 2014.
The Saudi-backed opposition, known as the High Negotiations Committee, had been reluctant to come to the talks, saying the government should first end the bombardment of civilians, allow aid into besieged rebel-held areas, and release thousands of detainees.
On Wednesday, delegation head Riad Hajib said the Assad government had not met those demands.
“The HNC delegation will leave tomorrow and will not return (to Geneva) until we see positive steps on humanitarian issues,” he said.
“This regime that ruined the Geneva negotiations in 2014 is doing it again during this political process,” Hijab added. “We came to Geneva to prove to the world that this regime does not believe in a political solution.”
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said France condemns the “brutal offensive by the Syrian regime with Russia’s support to encircle and asphyxiate Aleppo and its hundreds of thousands of residents.”
In a statement, Fabius said France backs de Mistura’s move to suspend the talks under such circumstances, saying Assad’s regime and its supporters “visibly don’t want to contribute to them in good faith, thus torpedoing peace efforts.”
“We call upon the regime and its supporters to halt their bombardment of opposition-held areas, especially in Aleppo, and to lift their besiegement of civilians,” he said.
U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said that Russia had voted for the U.N. Security Council resolution that paved the way for the talks, noting the measure called on Syria’s “regime and all parties to cease bombings and other attacks on civilians – not eventually, but immediately. Not soon, but now.”
“It is difficult in the extreme to see how strikes against civilian targets contribute in any way to the peace process now being explored,” Kirby said, noting that de Mistura “paused the talks in Geneva in part because of the difficulty of seeking political solutions while humanitarian aid is continually disrupted and innocent lives are taken.”