9:30-10:30 am EST (4:30-5:30 pm EET)

View agenda updates at  http://www.acsummit.org/about-the-summit/agenda/

Moderated by:

Frederic Hof, Senior Fellow, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, Atlantic Council

Participants:

Samuel Berger, Chair, Albright Stonebridge Group
Stephen Hadley, Principal, RiceHadleyGates LLC
Salim Idris, Chief of Staff, Syrian Supreme Military Council

Syria’s miserable civil war drags on and on. The humanitarian crisis it has provoked is heartrending, the political crisis it reflects is demoralizing, and the spillover problems it is creating grow more menacing from month to month. The agreement hammered out by Russia and the United States on the destruction of Syria’s immense stores of chemical weapons is perhaps the country’s only bright spot over the last three years, but even a fully successful CW effort seems likely to leave the country a brutal, nasty place that is a source of instability. How does Syria look from the region – and how does or should it look in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere? What does the Syrian opposition want and need, and how effective can it be against Asad and against terrorist groups now prominent in the fight against government forces? What are the prospects for talks on a political transition and what might make those talks more likely of success?