Malcolm Turnbull says a political solution in Syria will require the inclusion of Sunni groups that have felt disenfranchised by the Assad regime, and have consequently been left vulnerable to overtures from Islamic State.
The Australian prime minister told reporters at the Apec summit in Manila that in an ideal world, a post-conflict Syria would end up with “a form of government that involved power sharing between the various groups”.
“The example of Lebanon is one that springs to mind, where there is representation for people of various religious groups,” he said on Wednesday.
“Plainly, when you look at Daesh, the basis [of the extremist movement] is the Sunni population that has felt disenfranchised in Syria with very good reason and has also felt left out of the new government in Iraq,” he said.
He said a process of structured inclusion would “deprive Daesh of its support base”.
In a separate interview in Manila to Sky News, the foreign minister, Julie Bishop, said the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, might need to be part of the transition in the country because his removal would create a power vacuumthat would have its own negative consequences.
She said that if there had been any “obvious” candidates from the Syrian opposition forces to replace the dictator, their names would have come up by now.
The comments from the Australian leadership are the most unguarded assessments of the Syrian situation to date, and come after an intensive round of talks on Syria with other world leaders at the G20 and Apec summits.
The momentum for a political solution in Syria has intensified following the terror attacks in Paris last week.
A recent meeting of foreign ministers and the five permanent members of the UN security council in Vienna set a roadmap for a Syrian-led political transition in the riven country, which was canvassed extensively during the G20 meeting.
The Antalya gathering of world powers thus became a summit within a summit on Syria.
The security situation in Syria and the complex geopolitical interests among global powers make the task of bringing about a resolution extremely difficult.
But western leaders have launched a concerted push to bring the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to the centre of the negotiations and to underscore his status as powerbroker in an attempt to persuade the Russians to step back from shoring up Assad in the long term and contribute militarily in the fight against Islamic State.
Speaking after a meeting with the president of the Philippines, Benigno Aquino, which focused on counter-terrorism, Turnbull echoed a call at the G20 by the British prime minister, David Cameron, for pragmatism in framing a political solution on Syria.
In a message to Russia and the US, he said the parties had to adopt a “whatever it takes” attitude because the Syrian problem had dragged on for far too long.
“What is needed is a pragmatic settlement as quickly as possible. There needs to be a ceasefire as has been asked for at Vienna and there needs to be a power sharing deal,” he said.
Turnbull had met Putin at the G20 meeting and was asked about the Russian president’s views, but he declined to provide a clear answer, saying only that Putin had views on the transition.
Australia was excluded from the foreign ministers’ talks in Vienna on the eve of the G20 summit because the Russians insisted that discussions on a political transition should take place only among regional countries and the big powers.
Bishop insisted it was not a snub, saying other military contributors in the Middle East were also not part of the discussions.
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