The news out of Moscow that Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergay Lavrov are hoping to convene an international conference to seek a negotiated end to the Syrian civil war could signal the most significant American diplomatic accomplishment of recent years. But the fact that The New York Times buried the breakthrough on page 12 shows just how high the hurdles are before any conference gets off the ground, much less finds a solution. Significant outside pressure will be required to produce an arrangement that would involve the attendance of both the government of President Assad as well as a broad coalition of rebels, and an agreement on who would be in a transitional government.