Syrian government backs away from U.N. plan on humanitarian relief for Homs
Syrian government backs away from U.N. plan on humanitarian relief for Homs
(about 4 hours later)
GENEVA — Hopes faded Monday for a quick win at peace talks between Syria’s warring factions, with no sign that the Syrian government was prepared to allow a convoy of food to enter a besieged neighborhood in central Homs under the terms of an agreement brokered by the United Nations.
GENEVA — Hopes faded Monday for a quick win at peace talks between Syria’s warring factions, after the Syrian government declined to authorize a convoy of food to enter a besieged neighborhood in the center of the city of Homs under the terms of an agreement brokered by the United Nations.
The Syrian government said Monday it would allow women and children to leave Homs’s Old City, where around 2,500 people are facing rapidly deteriorating conditions after being surrounded by government troops for nearly two years.
There was no sign either that a promise to allow women and children to leave was moving forward, calling into question whether progress would be possible on the far more momentous issues that will have to be discussed if the conference is to end Syria’s brutal civil war.
But the U.N.-brokered plan calls for food to enter the area, rather than for women and children to evacuate, which would divide families and leave civilian and elderly men without help. The governor of Homs, Talal Barrazi, met Monday with United Nations officials to discuss where to take women and children who left the war-torn city about 100 miles north of Damascus, Syrian state television reported. But there was no mention of permitting the convoy of food, which was readied days ago, to enter the area.
U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi seemed dejected as he briefed reporters on the third day of the peace talks, which have so far succeeded only in exposing the vast gulf dividing the government and Syrian opposition delegations.
The government has given no indication that the convoy of humanitarian aid will be allowed to enter and has said no men may leave the Old City unless a list of all the men in the area is submitted in advance. Residents fear that the list of names would be used to detain the men.
“The discussions haven’t produced much, unfortunately,” he said.
U.S. officials monitoring the talks in Geneva expressed frustration with the slow progress on what was supposed to be a quick and easy fix designed to build good will ahead of tougher talks ahead on key political issues.
“We never expected a miracle,” he added.” There are no miracles here, but we will continue and see if progress can be made and when.”
“Civilians must be allowed to come and go freely, and the people of Homs must not be forced to leave their homes and split up their families before receiving much needed food and other aid,” said Edgar Vasquez, a State Department spokesman. He said the Syrian government’s tactic echoes its “kneel or starve” campaign under which troops surround rebel-held communities and deny them access to food and medicine to force them to submit.
At Monday’s session, the contentious question of what the warring factions hope to achieve at the conference was broached for the first time, with Brahimi asking the two sides to present their visions for a future Syria.
Opposition figures said that permitting the departure of women and children, many of whom are the families of rebel fighters, forces communities that oppose Assad to choose between starvation and surrender. The Syrian opposition has made clear that surrender is not the purpose of its attendance at the Geneva talks.
The government submitted a blueprint for ways to salvage the current Syrian state, fight terrorism and restore territories lost to rebel control, which the opposition immediately rejected.
The effort to bring aid to Homs came as U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who is mediating the negotiations, broached for the first time Monday the contentious subject of what the goal of the talks should be.
“We didn’t even look at it,” said Munzer Akbik, an adviser to Syrian Coalition President Ahmed Jarba.
The gulf between the two sides was immediately apparent. The official Syrian Arab News Agency reported that the government presented a plan to preserve the current regime and said the opposition had immediately rejected it. Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi stressed in an interview with state television that the plan did not mention the presidency.
The opposition said it presented a copy of the Geneva I communique, which spells out the conditions under which the conference is being held, as the basis of its proposal. The communique, agreed to by the United States and Russia in June 2012, lays out a framework for resolving the Syria crisis that includes humanitarian measures, a ceasefire and the creation of a transitional executive body that would take power away from President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
“Can we imagine that any Syrian could ever disagree with another about the importance of the presidency and the unity of Syria unless one of them is actually Israeli?” he asked.
Brahimi and other diplomats have repeatedly warned that the talks could last months if they are to succeed in bridging the differences between those seeking the overthrow of Assad and those representing his government.
The opposition said it presented as its transition plan a communique resulting from a June 2012 international conference in Geneva on ending the Syrian conflict. The communique from the so-called Geneva I conference, agreed to by the United States and Russia but not yet formally accepted by Syria, spells out the need for a new transitional governing body that would take power from the Assad government.
The failure to secure an agreement on humanitarian aid to Homs, intended to signal an early goodwill gesture, is already raising questions over whether Syria’s government will be prepared to offer compromises on the tougher political issues. Residents of the Old City of Homs, where people are in danger of starving after nearly 18 months under siege, said government shelling on the neighborhood intensified after the discussions began on a ceasefire to permit aid through.
The dispute over the delivery of aid to Homs and the gulf between the two sides’ conflicting visions for Syria’s future underscored the difficulty of securing any kind of agreement to end Syria’s civil war, which continues to rage unchecked.
“We haven’t seen any goodwill yet,” opposition spokesman Louay Safi said. “So we ask whether the regime is serious about a political transition.”
The peace talks got off to a fitful start Saturday with a proposal to focus first on ending the humanitarian crisis in Homs, where about 2,500 Old City resident people have been living alongside rebel fighters without access to food or medicine for months.
U.S. officials monitoring the talks in Geneva also expressed frustration with the lack of progress on access for the aid convoy, comprising 12 trucks of aid and medical supplies. The plan had been discussed in advance of the talks, in the hope of being able to demonstrate early progress, and the convoy has been ready to move for days, diplomats said.
Brahimi described the modest first proposal as a confidence-building measure intended to give the talks an early boost.
The government’s offer to allow women and children to leave was only part of a broader package of measures proposed, and is not sufficient, said Edgar Vasquez, a State Department spokesman.
Diplomats said that the proposal was negotiated in advance under prodding from the United States and Russia, and that it had been expected to be swiftly adopted as a demonstration of goodwill.
“Civilians must be allowed to come and go freely, and the people of Homs must not be forced to leave their homes and split up their families before receiving much needed food and other aid,” he said. The tactic echoes the “kneel or starve” campaign under which troops surround rebel-held communities and deny them access to food and medicine in order to force them to submit, he added.
Instead, the government initially denied knowledge of the plan, then set conditions for its implementation, said a Western diplomat briefed on the talks.
Activists issued a statement saying a single convoy of aid would not be enough to address the dire conditions in the besieged area, where there is a chronic lack of medical care for people injured in the shelling as well as a lack of food. They called for a comprehensive ceasefire that would allow anyone who wanted to leave to do so safely.
The opposition accused the government of cherry-picking parts of the plan in order to delay discussions on broader issues, such as ways to transition power away from Assad.
But the government has insisted no men can leave until a list is submitted to authorities of the names of all male residents in the area, raising fears that they would be targeted for arrest.
“It’s a stalling tactic,” said Oubai Shahbandar, a senior adviser to the opposition. “The regime is attempting to put various conditions not conducive to our goals.”
Brahimi has said this first round of talks will continue until the end of the week, after which there will be a break of about a week for the two sides to consult. Negotiations around the aid delivery will continue through the week, and it could still materialize in the coming days, he said.
Rebels with the Homs Military Council issued a statement Sunday saying that they are willing to observe a cease-fire to allow the convoy to enter. But activists said they are concerned that the government is not guaranteeing the safety of civilians who left. They also objected to the government’s demand for a list of the names of all the men in the besieged area.
Bringing the two sides together at all was an achievement, Brahimi said, but he also cautioned that it was “only one little step forward.”
“This might be because they want some specific names to arrest them,” said Abu Rami, an activist in Homs. “The very important thing is we want women, children, elderly and wounded to leave. We need them to get out to safety.”
“Whatever gain we have made is reversible,” he said.
Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told reporters Sunday that the government will allow women and children to leave central Homs and said the government is ready to allow humanitarian aid to enter.
Ahmed Ramadan contributed to this story from Beirut.
But he added that it is important that the aid “should not go to the hands of terrorists” and made it clear that the government regards all the armed groups battling to overthrow Assad as terrorists.
Mekdad indicated that the government is unhappy with the early focus of the talks on the plight of Homs, one of the first cities to rise up against Assad, and he accused the United States of being behind the push for the delivery of aid.
“Don’t insist on talking about the situation in a single part of Syria,” he said. “Because the United States wants the issue of Homs to be talked about, we are talking about Homs.”
A U.S official responded that the regime should not focus on the United States but on “engaging with the opposition in a serious negotiation on how to end the suffering of the Syrian people.”
