UN envoy to attend Astana talks

The UN’s Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura will attend peace talks in the Kazakh capital next week, the UN said Thursday, after previously announcing he was sending a deputy.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres asked De Mistura to attend “in light of the complexity and importance of the issues likely to be raised in Astana, and of the senior level at which the conveners of the meeting will be represented,” said spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
On Tuesday, de Mistura’s office said he had designated his deputy Ramzy E. Ramzy to go to Kazakhstan, but plans changed with Guterres and de Mistura together at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The Astana talks are being organized by Russia, Turkey and Iran with opposition leaders and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s representatives expected to meet face to face.
De Mistura said he wants UN-moderated negotiations to resume in Geneva on Feb. 8.
Assad said the Astana talks will focus on enforcing a cessation of hostilities to allow aid access across the country, with key opposition groups also putting the truce at the top of the agenda.
In Geneva, the head of the UN’s humanitarian task force for Syria, Jan Egeland told reporters that the cease-fire brokered in December by Moscow and Ankara has been a “disappointment” in terms of improving humanitarian access.
“That has to change,” he said, calling Astana a key opportunity to push for more aid deliveries.
Egeland complained that aside from fighting a “bureaucratic quagmire” imposed by the regime and opposition forces was consistently blocking civilians from receiving life-saving supplies.
Egeland and the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) also said food supplies in the desert town of Deir Ezzor, besieged by the Daesh since 2015, could run out in a few weeks.
WFP had to suspend humanitarian air drops in Deir Ezzor on Sunday because of heavy fighting after a fierce assault by Daesh.
The 93,000 people living under siege in Deir Ezzor “really do not have any lifeline other than relief by air,” Egeland said.
Opposition groups due to attend the talks say they will discuss only shoring up a cease-fire brokered by Turkey and Russia last month — and which the rebels say has been widely violated by the government and its allies — as well as humanitarian issues.
Local reconciliation agreements are the Damascus government’s preferred method for pacifying rebellious areas. They amount to the effective surrender of rebels in a particular area, typically after years of government siege and bombardment.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that the US had been invited to the Astana talks. Iran has said it opposes any US presence.
A number of Turkey-backed rebel groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner have agreed to attend.

Source : Arab News