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UN suspends Syria peace talks until end of February UN suspends Syria peace talks until end of February
(35 minutes later)
UN-mediated talks to end the war in Syria are on pause until 25 February, the United Nations envoy Staffan de Mistura has announced. He said the negotiations had not failed but needed immediate help from international backers led by the US and Russia. UN-brokered peace talks with the Syrian government and opposition have been temporarily suspended only three days after they began, highlighting the enormous difficulties of finding a political solution to the war and the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
“I have concluded frankly that after the first week of preparatory talks there is more work to be done, not only by us but by the stakeholders,” he told reporters after meeting the opposition delegation at their hotel. “I have indicated from the first day that I won’t talk for the sake of talking.” Hours before the opening of a major international donor conference for Syria in London, Staffan de Mistura, the UN envoy, announced in Geneva on Wednesday that he was suspending the fledgling process until 25 February because there was “more work to be done.”
Shortly before the announcement, a UN spokeswoman told Reuters that three humanitarian aid workers had been killed and hundreds of families uprooted in a military offensive around the city of Aleppo by Syrian government and allied forces. De Mistura told reporters that “it is not the end and it is not the failure of the talks”. But he appeared to link the move to mounting anger among the opposition that they are being asked to negotiate while Syrian government and Russian air attacks on rebel areas continue and escalate. Bashar al-Assad’s opponents say that the UN resolution mandating the talks requires an end to airstrikes and humanitarian relief for suffering civilians.
“The UN has received reports of displacement of hundreds of households in north-east towns of Bayanoun, Hariyatan, Anadan, Hayan and Rityan of Syria following an unprecedented frequency of airstrikes in the past two days,” the spokeswoman said. “Talks would not be meaningful if there is no benefit for the Syrian people,” de Mistura said at an impromptu press conference outside the hotel where opposition negotiators are staying. He had spent the previous two hours talking to their chief, Riyad Hijab, a former Syrian prime minister who defected in 2012. De Mistura is thought to have consulted the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon before making his surprise announcement.
Syrian state television and Lebanon’s Hezbollah TV reported that the Syrian army and allied militiamen had broken a long rebel siege of two Shia villages in northern Aleppo province. Nubl and Zahra, at the centre of opposition-held territory, had been blockaded for three years. “I have concluded frankly that after the first week of preparatory talks there is more work to be done, not only by us but by the stakeholders,” he said. “I have indicated from the first day that I won’t talk for the sake of talking.”
Their capture would be a boost for government forces, which have made significant advances in the province in the past few days. Rebels said the breakthrough came after hundreds of bombing raids by Russian warplanes. The suspension came after the Syrian army said that its forces had broken through rebel defences to reach two Shia villages in Aleppo province which had been under siege for three years. Rebels said the breakthrough came after hundreds of raids by Russian warplanes.
Aleppo factions, reeling from what they called an “unprecedented” onslaught, issued an ultimatum to the opposition delegation in Geneva late on Tuesday, according to a source close to the talks. Earlier on Wednesday the team was described as being split down the middle over whether to carry on.
The “intra-Syrian” talks, as the UN optimistically calls them, were originally scheduled to have begun on January 25 but only got under way four days later. On Monday de Mistura declared that the process had officially begun but the opposition bridled at that statement and split over whether to carry on. The Syrian government team has met the envoy three times but no progress has been made.
The decision came after opposition negotiators said for a second consecutive day that they would not enter into any discussion until their demands were met. Asked why the talks were going to resume, de Mistura said: “Why? They came and they stayed. Both sides insisted on the fact that they are interested in having a political process started.”
Bashar al-Jaafari, Syria’s ambassador to the UN and the head of its negotiating team, told Reuters: “It seems the first phase of preparations [for talks] will take a much longer time than expected. The official discussions did not take off yet unfortunately. We are still discussing how to proceed.”
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said his country had no intention of ending its campaign, which it claims is targeting Isis, but in fact has consistently struck at mainstream rebel groups – backed by the west and Arab countries – that are fighting Assad. “Russian strikes will not cease until we really defeat terrorist organizations like [the al-Qaida-linked] Jabhat al-Nusra. And I don’t see why these air strikes should be stopped,” he said at a news conference in Muscat, capital of Oman.
Ban called for “a strong show of solidarity” at the London conference. “We have at least 400,000 people stranded in besieged villages,” he said, adding that only a tiny percentage were receiving aid. “It is very difficult for us, very dangerous.”