BEIRUT — Peace talks over the Syrian civil war will not resume next week in Geneva, a U.N. envoy announced.
In comments to Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said the Syria talks won’t resume in Geneva on Thursday as he had previously hoped. He said he cannot “realistically” get the parties in the Syrian conflict back to the table by then, “but we intend to do so soon.”
Fighting has intensified in Syria over the past weeks, and a deadline to cease military activities has not been observed. The United States, Russia and other world powers agreed Feb. 12 on a deal calling for the cessation of hostilities within a week, the delivery of urgently needed aid to besieged areas of Syria and a return to peace talks in Geneva.
De Mistura halted the latest Syria talks on Feb. 3, because of major differences between the two sides, exacerbated by increased aerial bombings and a wide military offensive by Syrian troops and their allies under the cover of Russian airstrikes.
In an interview published late Thursday on the Swedish newspaper’s website, he said, “We need real talks about peace, not just talks about talks.”
En route to Jordan for talks about Syria and other matters, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday that he is still hopeful about a cease-fire and peace talks for Syria, even though Geneva talks will not resume next week.
Kerry said tough and complex issues remain and there is more work to do to resolve them. He added that the U.S. wants the process to be sustainable so that hostilities can be halted.
Despite the cancellation of cease-fire talks, Russia said it held “intensive” talks with the U.S. in Geneva on narrowing the two countries’ positions on Syria and on implementing a limited truce in Syria. The Russian side insisted that it won’t stop its bombing campaign, said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharovasaid
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said his country wants to coordinate its air campaign with the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State.
“To combat terrorism, we need not to stop the airstrikes but to have closer coordination in the air and on the ground,” he told state news agency RIA Novosti’s Sputnik foreign-language service. Bogdanov described the talks with the U.S.as “intensive.”
Separately, Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the U.N., called on Syrian President Bashar Assad to abandon any idea of a comprehensive military victory in Syria. If Syria follows the Kremlin’s leadership in resolving the five-year war, there’s a chance for a “decent” outcome, according to a transcript of a Kommersant newspaper interview with Churkin posted on the mission’s website.
Assad’s army could soon take Aleppo, Churkin said. Its advances there come after Syrian forces ended a three-year siege of two Shiite Muslim villages in northern Aleppo province earlier this month, cutting the opposition’s main supply route from Turkey.
KURDS CAPTURE TOWN
Along the Syrian border, Turkey intensified its cross-border artillery shelling on areas dominated by Syria’s U.S.-backed Kurdish militia.
Russia called an emergency Security Council meeting earlier in the day to submit a draft resolution calling on Turkey to “cease any actions that undermine Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” according to a statement on the Foreign Ministry’s website.
But France immediately rejected Russia’s proposal, warning that “a dangerous military escalation” could spiral out of control.
The Russian draft resolution didn’t name Turkey but it was clearly aimed at the Turkish government, which has threatened ground action in addition to its cross-border shelling.
Despite the shelling, the predominantly Kurdish coalition known as the Syria Democratic Forces captured the town of Shaddadeh in the country’s northeast. The town was one of the biggest strongholds of the Islamic State extremist group.
In recent weeks, Syrian government forces captured dozens of villages and towns across the country while the Syria Democratic Forces evicted opposition fighters and militants from areas near the border with Turkey in Aleppo province.
Turkey strongly opposes the Syria Democratic Forces, which has become one of the most effective forces on the ground fighting the Islamic State.
The International Committee of the Red Cross expressed deep alarm over the situation in Aleppo, saying the intensified fighting there has forced 70,000 people to flee their homes and left many without water or electricity.
The Red Cross said in a statement Friday that two hospitals hit earlier this week in Aleppo left them out of service. The clinics had provided thousands of consultations and surgeries, and delivered hundreds of babies per month. The Red Cross also said the remaining hospitals that work in the area are struggling to function.
Meanwhile, international rights group Amnesty International said Turkish authorities have denied entry to wounded Syrian civilians in need of immediate medical care after they fled the intense bombardment of the Aleppo countryside over the past two weeks.
“People we spoke to painted a tragic picture of the desperate situation for the civilians who remain trapped between daily airstrikes and dire humanitarian conditions,” said Tirana Hassan, crisis response director at Amnesty International. “Turkey’s highly selective practice is appalling — only severely injured people are allowed entry to seek medical treatment while everyone else fleeing the violence is left unprotected.”
Information for this article was contributed by Bassem Mroue, Suzan Fraser and Deb Riechmann of The Associated Press and by Henry Meyer and Ilya Arkhipov of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 02/20/2016