WASHINGTON — Foreign ministers from two dozen nations that comprise the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), meeting in Vienna on May 17, called for redoubling efforts to shore up a partial Syria cease-fire and try to expand it nationwide, and for using air drops if necessary to get humanitarian aid to besieged areas whose conditions of desperation were described as “medieval.” But in a grim sign of continued impasse among world and regional powers over a political solution to the five-year war, they did not immediately set a new date for talks between the Syrian regime and opposition.

To end the war and focus on fighting the so-called Islamic State, “a variety of competing interests are going to have to be reconciled, and those involved in this conflict with competing agendas are going to have to be willing to prioritize peace,” US Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking at a joint press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura, told reporters following the ISSG meeting in Vienna on May 17. 

Recent efforts to de-escalate the conflict are “fragile, and increasingly threatened by irresponsible and dangerous actions taken by those who would rather have this effort fail,” Kerry said. “And there are, frankly, actors on both sides who we think make that choice.” 

Kerry warned groups that persistently violate the cease-fire that they could be targeted. “That means that if they continue to do it and they’re pretending to be part of the cessation and they’re not, they could be subject to no longer being part of the cessation immediately,” Kerry said.