An agreement of sorts on Syria

Too many players in this war of proxies have still too much at stake to agree to a clear path to peace

Agreement on Friday by the UN Security Council to a unanimous resolution on Syria may be a welcome, belated consensus on the part of the international community, but it scarcely reflects well on the potency of the institution in whom we all entrust responsibility for maintaining world peace. Stymied by its own Cold War-like structures, notably the vetoes of the permanent members, the council has become a byword for inactivity, often in the face of appalling horror.

But, after a bloody four and a half years, the deaths of 250,000 Syrians, the exile of four million refugees, the emergence of a murderous terrorist group threatening regional mayhem, at last we have a peace plan of sorts for Syria brokered by the international community and on which all the superpowers can agree. Finally, the repeated vetoes wielded by Russia and China to protect Russia's client President Bashar al Assad, and which blocked all progress, have been temporarily put aside.

The resolution is a small step forward that at least requires parties to the conflict to come to the table and talk further, although it begs the question of exactly who should be there to represent the Syrian opposition. It also begs the question of how any putative ceasefire should be monitored and by who, and who will provide troops on the ground to take on Isis, or indeed whether or not Assad will remain in place at the end of the process.

Elections are supposed to be held 18 months after the political talks process begins, notionally in January, and the agreement requires that steps are to be taken to form a transitional government within six months. But few would put money at this stage on the realistic prospects of either happening.

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Too many players in this war of proxies have still too much at stake to agree to a clear path to peace, and the world community remains unwilling to give the UN and its Security Council the power to bang heads together to enforce even this limited, ambiguous agreement.