Hussein Malla/Associated Press
In a cave in Idlib Province, Free Syrian Army fighters did a traditional dance and sang songs critical of President Bashar al-Assad.
BERLIN — Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday that the Obama administration has been considering new steps to increase support for the Syrian opposition and hasten the departure of President Bashar al-Assad and that some of them would be decided at an international conference in Rome this week.
“We are determined that the Syrian opposition is not going to be dangling in the wind wondering where the support is or if it’s coming,” Mr. Kerry said at a news conference in London. “And we are determined to change the calculation on the ground for President Assad.”
Mr. Kerry’s comments came amid diplomatic maneuvering and some drama over the Rome meeting, scheduled for Thursday.
After the Syrian opposition signaled that it would boycott the Rome conference to protest what it sees as negligible help from Western nations, Mr. Kerry called Moaz al-Khatib, the leader of the Syrian opposition coalition, and persuaded him to attend.
American officials have said that their goal in supporting the Syrian resistance is to build up its leverage in the hope that Mr. Assad will agree to yield power and a political transition can be negotiated to end the nearly two-year-old conflict.
In Moscow, however, Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, appeared to be making a competing initiative. In a statement during a visit to Russia, which has been one of the Assad government’s main backers, Mr. Moallem said that Syrian authorities were “ready for a dialogue with anyone who’s willing, even with those who carry arms.”
It was the first time that a high-ranking Syrian official had signaled that the government is open to talking with Syrian rebels who have taken up weapons against the armed forces.
It was unclear whether Mr. Moallem’s offer came with caveats, such as a precondition that the Syrian rebels must disarm first. More fundamentally, if the aim of Mr. Moallem’s offer was to achieve a cease-fire while perpetuating Mr. Assad’s hold on power it would be fundamentally at odds with the demand of the opposition that the Syrian leader must be ousted.
Mr. Kerry, for his part, was skeptical of Mr. Moallem’s intentions as well.
“What has happened in Aleppo in the last days is unacceptable,” Mr. Kerry said, referring to the Scud missile attacks the Assad government directed at the city last week. “It’s pretty hard to understand how, when you see these Scuds falling on the innocent people of Aleppo, it’s possible to take their notion that they’re ready to have a dialogue very seriously.”
London was the first stop on Mr. Kerry’s nine-nation tour and Syria figured prominently in his discussions with William Hague, the British foreign secretary, who reinforced the message that more had to done to support the Syrian opposition because the possibility of a political solution was “blocked off.”
“Our policy cannot stay static as the weeks go by,” Mr. Hague said at a joint news conference with Mr. Kerry. “It will have to change and develop.”
The European Union agreed to a British proposal that nonlethal assistance could be sent to armed groups inside Syria. Discussions were now under way among European nations to determine just what sort of aid could be sent, but some American officials had said it might include night-vision equipment or armored cars.
Mr. Kerry declined to say whether the United States would also be willing to send nonlethal assistance to armed factions fighting Mr. Assad, saying that a variety of ideas was under discussion.
“We are not coming to Rome simply to talk,” he said. “We are coming to Rome to make a decision about next steps and perhaps even other options that may or may not be discussed further after that.”
Mr. Obama last year rebuffed a proposal from the C.I.A., State Department and Pentagon that the United States train and arm a cadre of Syrian rebel fighters.
After his meetings in Britain, Mr. Kerry flew to Germany for meetings on Tuesday with German officials and Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister.
Kerry Promises Not to Leave Syrian Rebels ‘Dangling in the Wind’
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Kerry Promises Not to Leave Syrian Rebels ‘Dangling in the Wind’
