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Talks on Syrian Conflict Resume in Geneva As Second Round of Syrian Talks Begin, U.N.’s Mediator Steps Cautiously
(about 9 hours later)
GENEVA — As fighting raged unabated in Syria, government and opposition representatives met in Geneva on Monday for a second round of peace negotiations in hopes of moving away from the inconclusive and often fractious exchanges in the first round that ended 10 days ago. GENEVA — Representatives of Syria’s government and opposition on Monday opened a second round in the fragile peace process as humanitarian agencies continued to evacuate civilians from the besieged Old City of Homs under a cease-fire that was negotiated in the first round.
Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations mediator guiding the peace process, prepared the ground by meeting the opposition’s chief negotiator on Saturday and then holding talks with Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, after his arrival in Geneva on Sunday. The preliminary discussion did not lead to immediate face-to-face negotiations. Mr. Brahimi began Monday’s discussions with another separate meeting with the opposition, to be followed by talks with the government delegation. The United Nations mediator, Lakhdar Brahimi, resumed the talks in cautious style. He met with opposition delegates, which included for the first time representatives of armed groups fighting in Syria, and later with the Syrian government’s team.
After the first round of talks ended on Jan. 31, Mr. Brahimi acknowledged that “we haven’t made any progress to speak of,” but identified some common ground between the two sides that he said could provide a platform for this week’s talks, adding the crucial caveat “if there is good faith and political will.” Hours later, the United Nations announced that Mr. Brahimi would meet on Friday with the American under secretary of state for political affairs, Wendy Sherman, and Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Gennady Gatilov, in what analysts here saw as a bid to inject some new momentum into the process.
There was scant evidence of either on Sunday as mortar shelling and sniper fire erupted in the city of Homs, inflicting civilian casualties and damaging aid agency vehicles. The vehicles had arrived under a United Nations-brokered humanitarian pause intended to enable aid agencies to deliver food and medicine to the blockaded Old City, where civilians have been trapped for the past two years. Days before Monday’s talks, Mr. Brahimi presented both sides with a memorandum proposing four main principles for this round: ending the violence and fighting terrorism; forming a transitional governing body; defining the relationship between the government and security services; and starting some form of national reconciliation dialogue.
Several hundred civilians described by aid workers as in frail health were able to get out of the Old City. But the gunfire that reportedly killed at least six civilians and forced aid agency staff members to shelter for several hours in the ruins of the Old City starkly exposed the hazards that have hindered international efforts to open up humanitarian access to more than a quarter of a million people believed to be living in areas under siege by government and rebel forces, and to millions of Syrians in other areas where insecurity has obstructed aid deliveries. But Mr. Brahimi has deferred bringing the warring parties together face to face until later in the week, apparently to avoid the kind of rancorous exchanges that marked their last direct meeting and to keep alive the chance of progress on confidence-building measures he proposed previously, including local cease-fires and prisoner exchanges.
The pressure for results at the Geneva talks was further underscored by reports of scores of casualties in an attack attributed to jihadist rebels on an Alawite village in the central province of Hama. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that 20 civilians, including women, and some 20 men defending the village were killed in that assault, The Associated Press reported. Mr. Brahimi wrapped up the first round of talks on Jan. 31 affirming that negotiators had laid a basis for progress “if there is good faith and political will.” There was little evidence of either here on Monday, with both sides presenting well-established positions and Mr. Brahimi calling off the daily news briefings he provided in the last round.
The only common ground between the government and the opposition visible at the end of the first round of talks was an agreement to negotiate within the framework of a communiqué that called for the creation of a transitional government with full executive powers and based on mutual consent. A spokesman for the opposition, Louay Safi, expressed frustration that senior members of the government team, including its leader, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, stayed out of the talks with Mr. Brahimi on Monday, calling into question their commitment to the negotiations.
But that position left ample room for opposing interpretations. Opposition delegates have said they want to focus immediately on the composition of a transitional government and timelines for creating it. Mr. Moallem, before leaving Syria, said the government was prepared to negotiate the communiqué article by article, but it has also denied any suggestion that it is ready to negotiate a transfer of power, and wants the Geneva talks to focus instead on tackling “terrorism.” “Until now we haven’t seen any serious intent on the part of the government,” Mr. Safi said in an interview. “We’re here to find a political solution, and they are not cooperating.”
In the interval since the first round of meetings, Mr. Brahimi and the Syrian parties to the talks have conferred with the United States and Russia, the sponsors of the Geneva process, and Moscow said Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov had conferred with Secretary of State John Kerry by phone over the weekend. No details have emerged of any initiatives to steer the warring parties toward carrying out cease-fires, prisoner exchanges or better access for aid agencies. In Syria, government and opposition forces renewed a cease-fire around Homs until Wednesday, allowing humanitarian agencies to resume an evacuation of civilians trapped for two years in the Old City and to deliver food and medicines for those remaining. The original cease-fire was interrupted over the weekend by mortar shells and sniper fire that left 11 people dead and 27 wounded, the authorities said.
Modest progress was reported on Monday in the international effort to destroy the Syrian government’s chemical weapons arsenal, which has been underway since October. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the Hague-based group that has been collaborating with the United Nations in overseeing that effort, reported on its website that a third shipment of chemicals was exported on Monday from the port of Latakia. Aid agencies had brought out more than 600 residents by Sunday, but the violence forced relief workers to take cover for several hours, United Nations officials said. An additional 200 residents were reportedly evacuated on Monday, and diplomats said hundreds more were still trying to leave after failing to reach evacuation points in time.
The group also reported that some of the chemical compounds in the Syrian stockpile had been destroyed inside Syria, but provided no further details on precisely what was destroyed or where. Most of the evacuees were allowed to travel on to Al Waer, said the United Nations’ chief aid coordinator, Valerie Amos. But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that 130 men had surrendered to Syrian authorities, and analysts say they were being held with their families at a facility in Homs for “processing.”
Syria amassed an estimated 1,200 tons of toxic chemical materials in its stockpile, half of it considered especially dangerous. The United States, which had threatened missile strikes on Syria before President Bashar al-Assad agreed last September to destroy the chemical arsenal, has complained in recent weeks that the Syrian government appears to be stalling. Two deadlines for exporting the chemicals have been missed. France was preparing to introduce a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council in a bid to ratchet up the pressure on both sides to allow humanitarian access. Despite the small breakthrough in Homs, diplomats say the government remains broadly obstructive, and over the past two months has withheld approval from at least seven United Nations applications for multiagency convoys to areas cut off by fighting.
Mr. Assad and his subordinates have attributed delays in the export to security problems from the war. But the director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Ahmet Uzumcu, said on Jan. 31 that “the need for the process to pick up pace is obvious.” Last week, Russia, which helped negotiate the agreement that averted the American missile strikes, said it expected the Syrian government to complete all chemical weapons exports by March 1. Modest progress was reported Monday in the international effort to destroy the Syrian government’s chemical weapons arsenal, which has been underway since October. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which has been collaborating with the United Nations in overseeing that effort, reported on its website that a third shipment of chemicals was exported on Monday from Latakia.
The exported chemicals are to be transferred at a southern Italian port to an American vessel, the Cape Ray, which is equipped with technology to neutralize them. The organization also reported that Syria has now destroyed almost all of its 120-ton stock of isopropanol, a common industrial chemical that formed part of the 1,200-ton chemical weapons armory it is obliged to destroy under the terms of the deal struck with the United States and Russia in September.
Under Syria’s agreement, backed by a United Nations Security Council resolution, the entire arsenal is to be destroyed by the middle of this year. The United States, which had threatened missile strikes on Syria before President Bashar al-Assad agreed to destroy the chemical arsenal, has complained recently that his government appears to be stalling. Two deadlines for exporting the chemicals have been missed.
The Assad government attributes export delays to security problems from the war. But the director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Ahmet Uzumcu, said in a statement on Monday that “a significant effort is needed to ensure the chemicals that still remain in Syria are removed — in accordance with a concrete schedule and without further delays.”