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U.N. Invites Syrian Parties to Peace Talks and Presents Demands An Odd Diplomatic Dance as U.N. Prepares for Syria Peace Talks
(about 4 hours later)
GENEVA — The United Nations invited representatives of the Syrian government and members of opposition groups on Tuesday to political talks in Geneva this week, as its top humanitarian official gave the warring parties a concrete list of demands: Let in food and medicine, stop bombing schools and hospitals. GENEVA — Ever get an invitation and think to yourself, “I wonder who else is going? Should I go?”
The office of the United Nations special envoy, Staffan de Mistura, would not say who was invited to the talks, which are scheduled to begin on Friday. The participants who accept will sit in separate rooms and negotiate only through intermediaries ferrying messages back and forth. On Tuesday, an assortment of rival Syrian politicians and warlords got a similar invitation — for tea, coffee and talks in Geneva. It came from Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy assigned to bring them together to consider ending the five-year-long war they have been waging on their own people.
The agenda for the talks, aimed at finding a political settlement to the five-year civil war, will include the negotiation of a nationwide cease-fire and access to areas that have been cut off from humanitarian aid for months, in some places years, said Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council and a special adviser on humanitarian affairs to the United Nations mediation team. Mr. de Mistura said details of the guest list were too “sensitive” to divulge. He let it be known that he does expect formal responses, and hopes the guests will show up in time for the start of the talks on Friday morning. This is Switzerland, after all.
Referring to besieged towns where dozens have died from malnutrition, Yacoub El Hillo, the United Nations humanitarian aid coordinator in Syria, declared, “Enough is enough.” With any peace talks, negotiations over how to hold negotiations are always delicate and intensely fought over, but this diplomatic dance is particularly odd. The mystery of the guest list has made these invitations more coveted — and potentially also more tedious. It is not only unclear who will come, but it is also unknown whether they are even close to ready to make the compromises necessary to reduce the suffering of Syrian civilians even slightly. Mr. de Mistura’s plan to keep people in separate rooms and shuttle among them is another indication of how complex the situation is.
“Stop attacks on schools, stop attacks on hospitals, stop attacks on medical personnel,” he said at a news conference in Geneva. The secrecy has also offered ample opportunity for propaganda by the various factions, some of whom quickly claimed to have been invited — or to have heard that their rivals had been invited.
For now, there is no clarity on who is coming — nor on who is not coming — let alone whether they will entertain even the modest goals that the United Nations has articulated for the talks: chiefly, a lifting of sieges, mainly by government forces, to allow food and medicines to reach those stuck behind front lines.
For weeks, parties have parried by proxy over who would get to represent the opposition to the government of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. Saudi Arabia has given its blessings to one coalition, composed of a variety of political dissidents and armed rebels — and said this group, known as the High Negotiations Committee, must stand alone on its side.
That does not fly with Russia, which is backing up Mr. Assad’s forces on the ground. It has lobbied for other representatives to be at the talks, including those that the Saudi bloc considers to be too close to the Assad government — and Kurdish groups that Turkey considers to be terrorists.
On Tuesday, the Turkish foreign minister went as far as to say that if the Kurdish outfit, called the Democratic Union Party, was invited to the talks, Turkey would withdraw its support. There were conflicting reports about whether the head of the party had in fact been invited.
Also on Tuesday, Haitham Manaa, a dissident who has eschewed the armed uprising and for and was among those Russia had supported, confirmed that he had received an invitation but suggested he would not attend as part of a hodgepodge delegation dictated by Moscow. “The list of names is like the Russian soup and is not acceptable,” Mr. Manaa said by phone Tuesday evening. “If it is going to be like that I won’t attend.”
The uncertainty did not stop the peace-talks train already in motion on the verdant lawns of the Palais des Nations, though. A gaggle of television news cameras began to set up for the big day. A team from the government-run Syrian news agency, SANA, had arrived. Its presence signaled that the government delegation was on the way. It would be led by its ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar al-Jaafari. How much authority — or appetite — he has to negotiate even a lifting of sieges is unclear.
Given what is happening inside Syria, it is hard to believe anyone is really ready to talk peace, or even a short-term cease-fire. Two bombs went off in a pro-government majority Shiite area in Homs on Tuesday, killing 19, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group in Britain. This month, airstrikes damaged two schools in Aleppo that the Norwegian Refugee Council said it had recently repaired. The government has not permitted the World Health Organization to send staff members into a rebel-held town to treat malnourished children.
Senior United Nations aid officials on Tuesday called on the warring parties, and their backers abroad, to do what they should have been doing all along: follow the laws of war.
“Stop attacks on schools, stop attacks on hospitals, stop attacks on medical personnel,” the United Nations top humanitarian official in Syria, Yacoub El Hillo, said at a news conference in Geneva.
“If they cannot agree on these basic things, then I don’t know what else they can agree on,” he added. “If the talks continue and the killings continue, what’s the point?”“If they cannot agree on these basic things, then I don’t know what else they can agree on,” he added. “If the talks continue and the killings continue, what’s the point?”
The expectation for the talks, organized with the participation of the United States and Russia, is that the Syrian parties will agree to stop the fighting that is preventing humanitarian agencies from delivering aid to besieged communities. The High Negotiations Committee met in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday to consider whom it would send, if anyone at all. On Twitter, a nudge came from one of the bloc’s most powerful backers: Britain.
The issue will be presented to the parties “not for negotiation, but for acceptance,” Mr. Egeland said. Gareth Bayley, the British government’s Syria envoy, posted: “Serious, considered discussion going on. No doubt Opposition understand their responsibilities.”
It was still unclear on Tuesday who was invited or how many of the parties to the conflict would participate in the talks. Mr. de Mistura had promised to seek the guidance of women’s groups and civil-society representatives. But none got the mysterious invitations on Tuesday, diplomats said, which galled Mouna Ghanem, a Syrian politician who is not part of either the Russia-backed or Saudi-backed blocs.
Members of the Syrian High Negotiations Committee, which represents a group of opposition factions, were scheduled to meet Tuesday in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, to decide whether to accept an invitation to participate. One member of the committee, Asaad al-Zoubi, told the Arabic-language news channel Al Hadath that he was pessimistic. “Just on the doors of Geneva III, majority of men are rushing to negotiate Syrian future,” Ms. Ghanem, coordinator for the Syrian Women Forum for Peace, said in a statement. She called women’s participation “shallow and insignificant.”
Secretary of State John Kerry urged the Saudi-backed committee to participate during his visit to Riyadh on Saturday, but members of the committee have demanded an end to bombing by the Syrian government and Russia as a condition for attending the talks. In any event, the government and opposition delegations, whether one or more than one, are not expected to gather around the same table. Several rooms have been prepared throughout the United Nations building for the various delegations to assemble and talk with Mr. de Mistura and his team. The Swiss government is expected to pick up the tab for everybody’s hotel rooms. There are at least three hotels for at least three delegations.
“I really hope that the Russians and Iranians and Americans and Saudi Arabians and the Turkish will be able to make this happen, because I think they have the power to make this happen,” Mr. Egeland said. There will be coffee and tea in the rooms. If there are views from some of the picture windows, the curtains are likely to be drawn for security reasons. There were no plans to serve Russian soup.
On Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group that has been monitoring the war, and Syrian state news media reported that more than a dozen people were killed in attacks in the city of Homs. SANA, the state news channel, said that 19 people were killed in an attack on government security forces. The observatory said that two explosions — a car bomb and a suicide attack — killed at least 29 people, including 15 members of government security forces.
Leaders of the humanitarian agencies have called the Syrian conflict “the most devastating crisis of the 21st century,” with more than 250,000 killed and half of Syria’s 20 million people forced from their homes. Two-thirds of Syrians live in poverty, and more than four million people are in areas that are hard to reach with humanitarian aid, said Mr. El Hillo, the United Nations aid official.
Syria has become one of the world’s most dangerous place for children, Hanaa Singer, the United Nations Children’s Fund representative in Damascus, reported, and deaths from starvation have been reported this month in the besieged town of Madaya.
Schools and hospitals have been targeted in daily attacks. Thirty-five schools have been attacked this year, more than 50,000 teachers have been killed or forced to flee the conflict, and two decades of education stand to be lost, Ms. Singer said.
“Today we see more and younger children right on the front line, manning checkpoints, carrying weapons and even taking part in the fighting and executions,” she said.
She added, “There is a real risk a whole generation of children will be lost.”