UN envoy rules out new Syria talks in next few weeks

Staffan de Mistura told the Security Council more progress is needed to strengthen a ceasefire and deliver humanitarian aid before talks can resume, according to diplomats who attended the briefing.

Staffan de Mistura, UN Special Envoy for Syria, speaks during a news conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 26, 2016. Martial Trezzini/Keystone viShow more

United Nations // The UN’s peace envoy for Syria told the Security Council on Thursday that he has no plans to convene a new round of peace talks in the next two or three weeks.

Staffan de Mistura briefed the council on his intention to start the next round of talks as soon as feasible “but certainly not within the next two/three weeks”, his office said.

According to diplomats who attended the briefing, the UN envoy said more progress was needed to strengthen a ceasefire and deliver humanitarian aid before talks could resume.

Two weeks of UN-brokered talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups in Geneva ended on April 27 with no breakthrough.

There had been expectations that a new round would be called at the end of May, but fighting has flared on the ground and aid deliveries to besieged areas continue to be blocked.

Diplomats said there was little chance that the opposition would take part in a new round of peace talks if violence was raging and no aid was reaching civilians.

The 20-nation group backing the Syrian peace process has said that it is up to Mr de Mistura to decide on the appropriate time to resume the talks.

The envoy has repeatedly called on the United States and Russia to take action to shore up the ceasefire that has been in place since February 27.

The peace talks are to reach a settlement to end the five-year war that has left 280,000 dead, driven millions from their homes and left hundreds of thousands cut off from food and medical supplies because of sieges and fighting.

Mr de Mistura said earlier on Thursday that many Syrians faced starvation if the regime and rebel groups do not allow greater access to humanitarian convoys.

There “are plenty of civilians at the moment in danger of starvation,” he said following the weekly meeting of the United Nations-backed humanitarian task force struggling to coordinate aid deliveries across Syria.

Mr de Mistura’s second-in-command and head of the task force, Jan Egeland, said it had proved far more difficult than expected to reach people in besieged and hard-to-reach parts of Syria this month.

“Of the one million people that we have planned and have tried to reach by land in May, we’ve only so far reached 160,000,” he said.

The UN says more than 400,000 people are living under siege in Syria, most of them in areas besieged by the regime.

In addition, more than four million people are living in so-called hard-to-reach areas that are generally near fighting and checkpoints, according to UN figures.

Since February, there have been efforts to dramatically scale up humanitarian aid access to these areas, but delivering supplies has become increasingly difficult amid a surge in violence that has left the February truce hanging by a thread.

Even areas where the UN had received full approvals to go in, “there has been infinite problems in actually reaching the places”, Mr Egeland said. In other areas where the approvals were based on a number of conditions, such as the besieged rebel held towns of Daraya and Douma, “we haven’t been able to reach the people at all”.

Mr Egeland said aid was also failing to reach the besieged towns of Moadamiya in rural Damascus and Al Waer, near Homs.

“I would say the situation is horrendously critical,” he said, referring to the crisis in the three besieged places.

“Children are so malnourished in these places that they will be dying if we are not able to reach them.”

* Agence France Presse