The United Nations special envoy for Syria said Wednesday that he had invited a range of Syrians to participate in what he described as preparatory, separate discussions on how to restart peace talks after more than four years of war.
In a briefing to the United Nations Security Council, the special envoy, Staffan de Mistura, said such discussions were “aimed at stress-testing any willingness, if there is any, of narrowing gaps” between President Bashar al-Assad’s government and its opponents.
Mr. de Mistura, who is the third United Nations envoy to seek negotiations to resolve the conflict, which began in March 2011, was vague about the timing, participants and venue of such discussions.
But Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who also appeared before the Security Council on Wednesday, later told reporters outside the chambers that the proposal was aimed at beginning a “step-by-step process to operationalize the Geneva Communiqué,” the 2012 document that became the starting point for Syria peace talks.
Mr. Ban said the discussions were envisioned to start in coming weeks.
Mr. de Mistura said that he had spent the past few months interviewing 216 people connected to the conflict, Syrian and non-Syrian, and that those discussions had revealed “a genuinely shared sense of urgency” about the fracturing of the country and the rise of Islamic militancy there, providing the basis for seeking a new way to resume peace talks.
In his prepared remarks to the Council, Mr. Ban said that at least 250,000 Syrians had been killed in the conflict, which has morphed into the world’s “largest humanitarian crisis.”
Almost half the country’s 25 million people have been forced to flee their homes, Mr. Ban said; the Islamic State and Nusra Front extremist groups have taken over parts of the country; sectarian hatreds have worsened; and the conflict has become a theater for “new, indiscriminate killing devices.”
They include the Syrian Army’s barrel bombs — explosive-filled barrels dropped on civilian populations — and so-called hell cannons, improvised artillery devices made by Syrian insurgents.
“Atrocious crimes are now almost an hourly occurrence, fed by a lack of accountability for the major human rights violations committed over the past four years and through decades of repression,” Mr. Ban said.
The Security Council meeting on Syria came against a backdrop of other political shifts in recent weeks that could portend changes in the conflict, although it is unclear whether they mean that it is any closer to an end.
On Sunday, in a striking admission, Mr. Assad conceded on Syrian national television that his army lacked soldiers and that it had surrendered territory to insurgents.
Last week, the United States and Turkey, which oppose Mr. Assad, reached an agreement that will allow American warplanes to bomb Islamic State redoubts in Syria and create a safe zone near the Turkish border for the moderate Syrian insurgents seeking to oust Mr. Assad.
This month, an international agreement was reached on the disputed nuclear activities of Iran, Mr. Assad’s ally in the region. Mr. Ban and other diplomats have said that they hope that the momentum generated by the agreement can spill over into finding a way to end the Syrian conflict.
Copyright: New York Times 2015
