Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what discussions he has had with his counterparts in the new US Administration to work towards a political settlement to end the Syrian conflict.
HMG regularly discusses the situation in Syria with the US administration. Most recently the Foreign Secretary, US Secretary of State Blinken, along with the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Italy issued a joint statement commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Syrian uprising on 15 March. In the statement we jointly made clear our support for a political solution to end the conflict, as set out in UN Security Council Resolution 2254. We stressed that in order to reach a settlement to bring lasting peace the Assad regime must seriously engage with the peace process and perpetrators of the most serious crimes committed in Syria must be held to account.