WORLD_ SYRIA_ Face-to-face Syrian talks stall

Face-to-face Syrian talks stall

January 27, 2014
The Gulf Today


GENEVA: Face-to-face talks between Syria’s warring parties stalled on Sunday over easing the humanitarian crisis, opposition delegates said, deepening doubts over tougher political negotiations which are due to follow.

Government and opposition delegations discussed aid and prisoner releases during a morning session in Geneva which had aimed to build some kind of trust between the sides who are implacably at odds over the fate of President Bashar Al Assad.

However, they disputed even the basic facts, and the opposition delegate said that international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi met the two parties separately later in the day.

These sessions would prepare for the more contentious political talks on Monday on the 2012 “Geneva 1” accord, the delegate, Ahmad Ramadan, said.

Following the first face-to-face talks on Saturday and Sunday morning, Ramadan said the government side had yet to respond to opposition demands to release thousands of prisoners taken during almost three years of conflict and to allow humanitarian aid into the city of Homs.

“It has been decided that there will be two preparatory separate sessions in the afternoon for Geneva 1 talks tomorrow,” he said. “These sessions will be about political negotiations and about the agenda of implementing Geneva 1 with all its articles so that we can start talks tomorrow.”

Another opposition delegate confirmed Ramadan’s comments.

Underlining the immense difficulty of implementing even local agreements on the ground, a UN agency trying to deliver aid to a besieged district of Damascus said state checkpoint officials had hampered its work, despite government assurance sit would allow the distributions.

“The agency is extremely disappointed that — at this point -the assurances given by authorities have not been backed by action on the ground to facilitate regular, rapid entry into Yarmuk,” spokesman Chris Gunness said.

In Geneva opposition figures said they presented a list of 47,000 detainees whose release they are seeking, as well as 2,500 women and children whose freedom they say is a priority.

They also wanted the government to allow aid into the rebel-held centre of Homs, besieged by Assad’s forces for 18 months, where the opposition says 500 families urgently need food and medicine.

However, Damascus denied having even got the list. Syrian TV cited a government source as saying Damascus was ready to release any civilians “but the coalition of what is known as the opposition has refrained from presenting a list.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier he hoped the talks could be conducted in a more business-like manner after the two sides exchanged bitter recriminations during a preliminary day of speeches last Wednesday.

In an interview with NTV television, he called for progress on aid, unblocking besieged areas and prisoner exchanges.

“All this would strengthen trust and affect the atmosphere at the talks in Geneva. Beyond this it is very difficult to make guesses; the situation is extremely grave, positions are polarised, emotions are on the edge,” he said in comments posted on the Foreign Ministry’s web site.

Geneva 1 called for the establishment of a transitional governing body in Syria by mutual consent.

Reuters



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