The United States, Britain and other countries opposed to Syrian President Bashar Assad will not support the reconstruction of the country until there is a political transition "away from Assad," British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Monday.
The "Friends of Syria" group, an alliance of mainly Western and Gulf Arab countries, met in New York on Monday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly at a time when the conflict in Syria, now in its seventh year, appears to be less urgent, with attention focused on the North Korean nuclear threat and the fate of the Iran nuclear deal.
"We believe that the only way forward is to get a political process going and to make it clear to the Iranians, Russians and Assad regime that we, the like-minded group, will not support the reconstruction of Syria until there is such a political process — and that means, as Resolution 2254 says, to a transition away from Assad," Johnson said.