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UP FRONTWednesday 9 March 2016
UN: ‘Substantive’ Syria peace talks to begin within days
JAMEY KEATEN to seize land. Those groups take place in various phas- The Observatory said Nusra sponse.
Associated Press have been excluded from es and not face-to-face, at Front fighters led the assault The first and previous round
GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. the diplomatic efforts. least initially. on Al-Eis hill on Monday of talks convened by de
envoy for Syria will be- Opposition leaders have While the cease-fire has sig- night, but did not capture Mistura collapsed within
gin holding “substantive” set conditions before they nificantly reduced the vio- it. days in early February over
peace talks with both Syr- agree to rejoin the peace lence, reports of sporadic A mayor of a Turkish city a Russian-backed govern-
ian government officials ment offensive near the
and opposition represen- Staffan de Mistura, UN Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria, speaks during a press Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.
tatives no later than next conference about Syria in Geneva, Switzerland. Russia has supported Assad
Monday even as prepara- with a military campaign in-
tions toward the discussions (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP)) volving blistering air power.
get underway this week in The cease-fire has been
Geneva, a spokeswoman talks, and it is not yet cer- fighting continued. near the Syrian border said shepherded by Russia and
for the envoy said Tuesday. tain whether they would The Syrian Observatory for at least three rockets fired the United States through
The resumption of Syr- indeed attend. However, Human Rights, a Britain- from Syria landed on the the International Syria Sup-
ia peace talks has been some members of the High based monitoring group, Turkish side of the border port Group, a group of
expected ever since a U.S.- Negotiations Committee, a said fighting killed more ci- Tuesday, killing one person world and regional pow-
Russia-engineered cease- Saudi-backed group of op- vilians in the past two days and wounding another. Ki- ers and organizations that
fire, which has sharply re- position movements, were than in the previous eight lis’ Mayor Hasan Kara said includes several Western
duced bloodshed in the set to attend the “cessa- days combined. It said 80 one rocket hit a populated powers as well as Turkey,
five-year war, took effect tion of hostilities” task force civilians died in fighting in neighborhood, causing ca- Iran and Saudi Arabia.
on Feb. 27. The truce — meeting on Wednesday. cease-fire areas since the sualties and panic, and two A French diplomat said
though limited and ten- De Mistura “will start sub- truce took effect 10 days other rockets exploded on Tuesday that the Syrian op-
tative — has mostly held, stantive meetings with ago — more than half of an empty patch of land. position was still debating
even as sporadic violence those who are in Geneva,” them in the past two days. It was not immediately involvement in new talks,
has continued. by March 14 at the latest, Separately, the official Syr- clear who fired the rockets and will give its answer in
Staffan de Mistura was still Chahine told reporters. She ian news agency SANA or whether Turkey’s military the coming days. He said
planning for the talks to offi- said the peace talks would said government forces re- — which has been retaliat- the conditions are only par-
cially start Wednesday, but resume “in a staggered pelled an assault on a stra- ing to any rockets or shells tially met to resume nego-
logistics and other issues and proximity system,” tegic position south of the fired from Syria into Turkey tiations, saying there is a lot
have meant that delega- meaning that they are to contested city of Aleppo. — had fired back in re- of progress yet to be made.
tions are likely to arrive in The diplomat, who was not
Geneva over several days, authorized to be publicly
spokeswoman Jessy Cha- named, warned against
hine said. Meanwhile, the holding talks too hastily, or
U.N. envoy is to convene holding them if the opposi-
Wednesday two separate tion is not ready to join, say-
panels aimed at monitor- ing that could be counter-
ing the truce and pushing productive. He said talks
for humanitarian aid ship- should only resume if they
ments. are credible, and said par-
The three-track diplomatic ticipants should understand
push has become the most the opposition’s concerns
promising, if distant, hope about holding talks while
in years to end a war that they’re being bombed.
has cost over 250,000 lives, The official said Russian
driven 11 million people bombing had decreased
from their homes, and since the cease-fire began,
given an opening to radi- and went down sharply
cal groups like the Islamic over the last two days, but
State and Syria’s al-Qaida that Assad’s forces were still
branch, the Nusra Front, bombing this week.q
