Carter outlines principles for Geneva talks on Syria

As a first, important step, both Russia and the United States should agree to help set up an independent election commission, and Iran and other regional powers must also agree to end their support for bloodshed in Syria, said former U.S. President Jimmy Carter . In an op-ed article, carried by Washington Post on Monday, Carter and Robert Pastor - a senior advisor to the Carter Center on conflict resolution, laid out three principles upon which January's Geneva talks should be based, noting that currently, "the principal actors insist on preconditions of victory rather than mutual accommodation essential to bringing the war to an end." The first principle is self-determination: "The Syrian people should decide on the country's future government in a free election process under the unrestricted supervision of the international community and responsible nongovernmental organizations, with the results accepted if the elections are judged free and fair." The second is respect: "The victors should assure and guarantee respect for all sectarian and minority groups." And the third is peacekeepers: "To ensure that the first two goals are achieved, the international community must guarantee a robust peacekeeping force." Carter and Pastor wrote that "alternative preconditions" can lead to peace, because even if they may be hard for those on the ground in Syria to accept, larger powers that have been supporting the war in one way or another will have to accept them first. "All actors will need to make hard compromises if they want to end the war, " they explained. "These preconditions should not be controversial, but they mean that Syrian factions - and their supporters - would have to back down from their former unreasonable demands." The op-ed also stressed the point that there can be no winners in this war. However if some of the world's largest powers were able to reach a deal with the Syrian regime on chemical weapons, other surprises are possible. "It is clear that the parties think they cannot afford to lose because they fear annihilation and this explains why the war will keep going unless the international community imposes a legitimate alternative," they said. The two and a half year old civil war in Syria - one that has turned into a proxy war for regional actors - has thus far left 6 million Syrian internally displaced, 2 million in refugee camps in neighboring countries, and 100,000 people dead.