First round of Syria peace talks end on Friday with little headway
January 31, 2014 – After a “tense but rather promising” meeting on Thursday, between
representatives of the Syrian Government and the main opposition group on reaching
a political end to the country’s three-year-civil war, the United Nations/Arab League
mediator said that the first round of talks will end on Friday with no serious breakthrough
and no major change in the position of either side.
Speaking to reporters in
Geneva on Thursday after what he described as a “fairly long meeting” where the two
sides discussed “sensitive” matters regarding the security situation and terrorism
in Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, Joint Special Representative of the United Nations and
the League of Arab States said that the first round of talks would wrap up after a
little more than a week.
“Tomorrow morning will be our last session. I hope
that we will try…to draw some lessons about what we did and see if we can organize
ourselves better for the next session. I think that’s enough for a beginning,” said
Mr. Brahimi, expressing the hope that when the talks reconvene – reportedly in February
– “we will be able to have a more structured discussion.”
Since the conflict
erupted in March 2011 between the Government and various groups seeking the ouster
of President Bashar al-Assad, well over 100,000 people have been killed and nearly
9 million others driven from their homes. More than 9.3 million people within the
country need humanitarian aid, the UN has said, with over 2.5 million of them living
in areas where access is seriously constrained or non-existent.
The goal of
the talks, under way in Switzerland since 24 January, is to achieve a political solution
to the Syrian conflict through a comprehensive agreement between the two sides for
the full implementation of the Geneva communiqué, adopted after the first international
meeting on the issue on 30 June 2012, and since endorsed by the UN Security Council.
The
communiqué lays out key steps in a process to end the violence. Among others, it calls
for the establishment of a transitional governing body, with full executive powers
and made up by members of the present Government and the opposition and other groups,
as part of agreed principles and guidelines for a Syrian-led political transition.
While
noting that the two sides agreed today that “terrorism does exist in Syria and that
is a very serious problem”, Mr. Brahimi said no agreement was reached on how to deal
with it. However, the rival delegations did agree to hold a moment of silence to honour
victims of the civil war – “no matter which [side] they belong to.”
Overall,
Mr. Brahimi said, “we haven’t noticed any major change, to be honest, in the two sides’
positions,” and he expressed deep disappointment that there has been no movement on
allowing UN aid convoys into Homs, or on allowing civilians to leave the besieged
city, which has been cut off from supplies.
“I am …very, very disappointed,
because the situation in Homs is bad and has been bad for months, years even. That
is the first place very bad fighting and destruction has taken place,” he said, though
he added that negotiations on humanitarian access are still ongoing.