Clinton, Sanders welcome major powers ceasefire plan in Syria

Democratic U.S. presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders welcomed the major powers’ agreement to plan for a ceasefire in Syria in a debate on Thursday.

“I congratulate Secretary of State John Kerry and the President for working on this agreement. As you’ve indicated what is happening in Syria, the number of people, the hundreds of thousands of people who have been killed, men, women 20,000 children, the people are forced to flee their own country. It is unspeakable. It is a real horror. Now what I think is that right now we have got to do our best in developing positive relations with Russia but let’s be clear. Russia’s aggressive actions in the Crimea and in Ukraine have brought about a situation where President Obama and NATO’s correctly I believe are saying a lot, we’re going to have to beef up our troop level in that part of the world to tell (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, that his aggressiveness is not going to go unmatched,” Sanders said during the debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Major powers agreed to a cessation of hostilities in Syria set to begin in a week and to provide rapid humanitarian access to besieged Syrian towns, but failed to secure a complete ceasefire or an end to Russian bombing.

Following a marathon meeting in Munich aimed at resurrecting peace talks that collapsed last week, the powers, including the United States, Russia and more than a dozen other nations, reaffirmed their commitment to a political transition when conditions on the ground improved.

The United States and European allies say few Russian strikes have targeted those groups, with the vast majority hitting Western-backed opposition groups seeking to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Diplomats cautioned that Russia had until now not demonstrated any interest in seeing Assad replaced and was pushing for a military victory.

“The agreement on a ceasefire though is something that has to be implemented more quickly than the schedule that the Russians agreed to. You know, the Russians wanted to buy time. Are they buying time to continue their bombardment on behalf of the Assad regime to further decimate what’s left of the opposition, which would be a grave disservice to any kind of eventual ceasefire. So I know Secretary Kerry is working extremely hard to try to move that ceasefire up as quickly as possible. But I would add this, you know, the Security Council finally got around to adopting a resolution, at the core of that resolution is an agreement I negotiated in June of 2012 in Geneva which set forth a ceasefire and moving toward a political resolution trying to bring the parties at stake in Syria together,” Clinton said.

Clinton entered Thursday’s debate under acute pressure to calm a growing sense of nervousness among her supporters, after a 22-point drubbing by Sanders on Tuesday (February 9) in the New Hampshire primary election and a razor-thin win last week in the Iowa caucus. Both states have nearly all-white populations.

For his part, Sanders, an independent U.S. senator of Vermont who calls himself a democratic socialist, hoped to harness the momentum and enthusiasm he gained from the first two contests and prove he can be a viable contender to lead the Democratic Party to victory in the Nov. 8 presidential election.