By BEN HUBBARD
JAN.17, 2014
The New York Times
Mr. Moallem, left, said Mr. Lavrov, right, would make the contacts necessary to “establish a zero hour for a cease-fire and the cessation of military operations” in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian government on Friday proposed a cease-fire with rebel forces in the city of Aleppo and said it was willing to exchange detainee lists with the opposition to pave the way for a possible prisoner exchange.
The proposals, which Walid al-Moallem, the Syrian foreign minister, said he had given to Russia, appeared to be an effort by the government to show good faith days before an international peace conference is to be convened in Switzerland aimed at ending Syria’s civil war.
It remains unclear who will attend the conference, set to open on Wednesday near Geneva. While the Syrian government has accepted the invitation, it has suggested that the conference’s goal should be fighting “terrorism.” The West is increasingly concerned about extremist militants in the insurgency and their potential to become a threat outside Syria, but the government uses terrorism to describe the entire rebel movement that seeks to topple President Bashar al-Assad, so such statements suggest an unwillingness to engage with any grievances against his rule.
Many of the government’s enemies have deep reservations about the conference, and the opposition’s exile leadership, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, began meeting in Istanbul on Friday to decide whether to attend.
A decision on Friday seemed unlikely, however, with dozens of members either refusing to attend the meeting altogether or withdrawing once they arrived, arguing that peace negotiations were against the founding principles of the coalition, a spokesman said.
“Geneva is not an easy decision,” said the spokesman, Khaled Saleh, as his group continued heated sessions in a resort hotel in Istanbul’s Silvri district, miles from the city center.
“We’re talking about 90 to 95 different groups trying to figure out the chances of success in Geneva, asking, ‘Why go?’ ” he added, referring to the coalition’s many factions.
The 44 or so members of the 120-member coalition who refused to attend questioned the benefits of participating in Geneva and criticized Ahmad al-Jarba, the coalition president, for committing to the talks in September without the consent of coalition members, Mr. Saleh said.
The United States and other Western powers have put great pressure on the coalition’s leadership to attend the conference, seeing it as the best way to end a nearly three-year-old war that has killed more than 120,000 people.
While few expect that the conference will fulfill its stated goal of creating a transitional government with full executive powers, its supporters hope that it will at least lead to increased humanitarian access and local cease-fires to make life easier for Syrian civilians.
Mr. Moallem provided few details on the government’s proposals. In a joint news conference in Moscow with Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, Mr. Moallem said Mr. Lavrov would make the contacts necessary to “establish a zero hour for a cease-fire and the cessation of military operations” in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.
He also said that the Syrian government agreed “in principle” to exchanging people held in Syrian prisons for those “kidnapped by armed groups” and that it was willing to trade lists and discuss how to carry out an exchange.
While leaders in Syria’s opposition did not respond immediately to the proposals, trust between the parties is nonexistent. Previous internationally brokered cease-fires have failed and rebel leaders recently accused the government of using local truces to impose surrender on rebel areas.
Relatives and residents gathered and prayed around the bodies of children who were killed on Friday after rockets fired from Syria hit the Lebanese border town of Arsal. Hassan Abdallah/Reuters
The government, for its part, dismisses all opposition to its rule as terrorism and points out that the coalition has limited sway over the rebel fighters on the ground.
Despite international efforts to guarantee participation by both sides, they still sharply disagree on the conference’s goals.
On Friday, Haitham al-Maleh, a member of the opposition coalition, told Al Jazeera television that the group would not negotiate “with the regime” but only “to remove the regime.”
In Moscow, Mr. Moallem suggested that the government expected few key changes to come from the conference and would continue “to protect the ambitions of the Syrian people and carry out the directions of President Bashar al-Assad.”
Also on Friday, a number of rockets fired from Syria exploded in a village near the Lebanese border, killing seven people, Lebanon’s national news agency said. The dead included six children, five of them from one family.
Security across Lebanon has been shaken by the civil war in neighboring Syria because of the permeable border between the two countries and the strong links between groups in Lebanon and the warring sides in Syria.
While it was unclear who had fired the rockets that exploded in the border village, Arsal, the area is a transit zone for refugees fleeing Syria and for rebel fighters from Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere.
The rocket attack came one day after a suicide car bomb attack killed four people, including the bomber, in the town of of Hermel further north along the border.
Sebnem Arsu and Karam Shoumali contributed reporting from Istanbul.
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc .
Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị .
conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
18012014
___________
Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là đồng lõa với TỘI ÁC
No comments:
Post a Comment