To the consternation of some of the politicians around him, he also wasn’t inclined to mince words. “We reject this agreement,” Idris told journalists, speaking in accented English, “and we think that the Russians are playing a game to win time for the criminal regime in Damascus.”

Idris had reserved his most scathing remarks for the Kremlin — “Lavrov and Putin are terrorists, partners in [shedding] Syrians’ blood,” he said — but he also made clear his exasperation with the U.S. “I would like to remind the international community that the Syrian people are dying for more than two years, and nobody is talking about their suffering,” he said, on hearing that Kerry and Lavrov had given the Syrian regime until mid-2014 to destroy its chemical weapons. “We are going to say to our friends in the world: Don’t leave the Syrians alone facing and resisting this brutal regime.”