VIENNA — Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday that a group of nations with opposing stakes in the Syrian war had agreed to "explore the modalities of a nationwide cease-fire" and had asked the United Nations to oversee the rewriting of the country's constitution and then new elections.
The announcement, which Kerry made with his Russian counterpart and adversary in the broadening war in Syria, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, represented the first time all the major outside participants in a conflict now in its fifth year had agreed on the start of a political process to bring it to an end.
But what they described after seven hours of heated negotiations here, marked by a sharp exchanges between the foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia, amounted to more of an aspiration than a negotiation.
There was no target date or deadline for either the cease-fire or a new constitution and election that would follow. It remains unclear whether President Bashar Assad of Syria — who was not invited to the meeting — or the rebels who have been seeking to overthrow him will agree.
But there was agreement to meet in two weeks to put more specifics into the basic principles they issued Friday night, which included a commitment to keep Syria together as a single nation — just at a moment it seems headed toward splintering.
Kerry and Lavrov said they remained deeply divided on the question of whether Assad must go in any final settlement, as the United States and its main allies, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states, have all demanded. "We have no agreement on the destiny of Assad," Lavrov told reporters as he sat next to Kerry. "The Russian people believe it is up to the Syrian people to decide."
But both men said the cease-fire would not apply to the conflict with the Islamic State forces that have now commandeered parts of Syria. And while Kerry and Lavrov spoke only hours after the White House announced the insertion of roughly 50 Special Forces into Syrian territory to help train rebel groups and target attacks on the Islamic State forces, the two men said they had spoken about some kind of coordination in their attacks that goes beyond the narrow "deconfliction" conversations that are designed to keep American and Russian forces from inadvertently clashing.
"We have some ideas that I am taking back to Washington" about cooperative approaches, Kerry said about his discussion with Lavrov. But he added that "they would need the president's approval, and I am sure the president wants to maximize our effort against the terrorists."
Notably, Lavrov declined to criticize, at least publicly, President Barack Obama's decision on the Special Forces and took issue with the suggestion that it risked setting the conditions for a Cold War-like proxy war between Russian and American forces. Kerry insisted that while the decision to put forces on the ground had been discussed for some time, "It's really a coincidence that it came out today."
He told reporters that he was not aware a decision had been made until earlier on Friday, when he began convening the diplomatic meeting in the Imperial Hotel.
For Kerry, getting a diplomatic process going to end the Syrian war has become something of a negotiating obsession, much as reaching the nuclear accord with Iran — which came to fruition here in Vienna three months ago, with talks taking place in some of the same hotel rooms.
While the initial progress on Syria was slim, many of the diplomats who were involved said that it amounted to more than they thought possible even a few weeks ago. "This meeting was definitely not an easy one," said Federica Mogherini, the European Union's top foreign policy official, "but for sure a historic one as we had, for the first time, all the actors around the table and I would say a very constructive atmosphere."
Still, the tensions in the room underscored how difficult it could be to reach a common understanding. The participants lined up, broadly speaking, into two groups: A Russian- and Iranian-led group that has been supporting Assad and his Alawite minority government, and an American- and Saudi-led group, including the Persian Gulf states, that has insisted any process must end up with the Syrian leader gone from the country.
The most heated conversations took place between Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, and his Saudi counterpart, Adel al-Jubeir. Both were educated in the U.S. — Zarif at the University of Denver, Jubeir at Georgetown University — and both have deep connections with the U.S. government. But until a few days ago the Saudis were refusing to sit in the same room with the Iranians, and they spent much of the meeting, one official said, "voicing grievances and accusations," which Kerry had to try to get past in order to win agreement on basic principles.