Parties in struggling Syria talks ‘unclear’ on date of next round

Russia applauds cooperation with US over Syria

MOSCOW/GENEVA, April 27, (Agencies): The United Nations said on Wednesday no date had been set for the next round of Syria peace talks, contradicting a report quoting Russia’s deputy foreign minister as saying talks would resume in Geneva on May 10.

UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura is struggling to keep the peace process alive after the main opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) left formal talks last week.

Asked on Wednesday whether a new date had been set, the HNC said it was up to the United Nations to say when peace talks would resume but that it would not take part until its demands were met.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov’s comments were reported but RIA news agency earlier on Wednesday, but a spokeswoman for de Mistura said in an email that May 10 was speculation.

De Mistura was due to address the UN Security Council by video-link on Wednesday night from Geneva at the end of a two-week round which began on April 13.

He is expected to speak beforehand with both US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the co-sponsors of the fragile two-month ceasefire who are steering the talks.

De Mistura is talking about May 14-15 for starting the next round, a Western diplomat said.

“But it is very theoretical,” the diplomat told Reuters. “It is not at all a given that the two parties will return to Geneva.”

“De Mistura feels that ending the round without giving a date for the next one would not be a good sign But it’s theoretical.”

Meanwhile, Russia’s defence ministry on Wednesday applauded Moscow and Washington’s cooperation over Syria as a truce brokered by the two nations was tested by a recent spike in violence.

“Overall, we positively assess the cooperation with the United States in Syria,” defence minister Sergei Shoigu said at an international security conference in Moscow.

“Our bilateral agreements on the prevention of incidents in the airspace are working, the military structures responsible for the reconciling the parties are interacting.”

Shoigu said Moscow and Washington “must cooperate more closely” in the fight against international terrorism.

“We are ready for this,” he said. “The ball is in Washington’s court.”

In a phone call last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Barack Obama agreed to work to strengthen the ceasefire which took effect on Feb 27.

After taking hold, the landmark partial ceasefire dramatically reduced violence across much of Syria, raising hopes that a lasting deal to end the bloodshed could be struck at peace talks in Geneva.

Russia has asked the United Nations to blacklist a major rebel group that is playing a key role in peace talks to end the Syrian civil war, its ambassador to the UN said.

Mohammed Alloush, a leading figure in Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam), is the chief negotiator for the High Negotiations Committee, the war-torn country’s main opposition group, at UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva.

Russia, the key backer of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, has also asked that another Islamist rebel group, Ahrar al-Sham, be blacklisted.

“The Russian delegation submitted to the UN Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee a request” to add “two organisations: Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham,” to a blacklist that includes the Islamic State group and al-Qaeda, Russia’s ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin said in a statement Tuesday.

Churkin said that the two groups are “closely linked to terrorist organisations, primarily the Islamic State group and al-Qaeda.”

The groups “both give (the IS and al-Qaeda) and receive from them financial, material, technical and military support,” he said.

Militants from the Islamic State group seized five villages from Syrian rebels close to the Turkish border Wednesday, further weakening the rebels’ foothold in the Aleppo area.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a network of activists monitoring the Syria conflict, said the extremist group took five villages in Azaz district, north of Aleppo, where rebels hold an enclave host to tens of thousands of internally displaced civilians.

The IS group’s news agency also reported the advance.

Syrian rebels are anticipating a major government offensive against their position in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and once the commercial capital. Aleppo is now divided between government and rebel control. Dozens of civilians have been killed in shelling and airstrikes on the city over the past week.

A government offensive backed by Russian air power and regional militias earlier this year dislodged rebels from parts of Azaz and severed their corridor between the Turkish border and Aleppo. The predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who are fighting for their autonomy in the multilayered conflict, also made ground against the rebels.

That left the rebels in Aleppo with just one narrow corridor to the outside world, through Idlib province. Those in Azaz are now squeezed between IS to the east and the SDF to the west and south, while Turkey tightly restricts the flow of goods and people through the border.