U.K., EU leaders meet, disagree over Irish border, post-Brexit era

The five-hour daily BEIRUT — pauses in fighting in Syria’s embattled eastern suburbs of the capital Damascus laid

— out under a “unilateral” plan by Russia are not enough

— to take in aid or evacuate civilians, a top U.N. aid official said Thursday.

Jan Egeland also said the U.N. Security Council resolution over the weekend calling for a 30-day cease-fire has done little to improve the situation in the rebel-held region east of Damascus.

“Since it was adopted, it did not get better — it got worse,” he said.

Eastern Ghouta was among the first areas to rise up against President Bashar Assad’s rule in 2011.

The area was taken over by rebels as unrest turned into an armed insurgency, then a full-blown civil war now seven years old.

Egeland’s c omments came after the Russian military accused Syria’s rebels of shelling a humanitarian corridor that Moscow set up with the Syrian govern- ment, offering residents of Damascus’ besieged east- ern suburbs a way out of the embattled enclave.

Later on Thursday, Maj. Gen. Yuri Yevtushenko, chief of the Russian center for reconciliation of conflicting sides in Syria, said militants in Ghouta were carrying out public executions of people who want to leave the area.

He said “the hotline of the Russian reconciliation center has begun receiving calls about public executions of those who are trying to flee from the enclave.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered a five-hour daily humanitarian pause to allow civilians to exit the region. The daily pauses began Tuesday but so far, no humanitarian aid has gone in — and no civilians have left the area, except for an elderly Pakistani man and his wife who were evacuated from the town of Douma on Thursday.

The Syrian Red Crescent confirmed it managed to evacuate the family to Damas- cus, handing them over to the Pakistani embassy. The Kumait news agency, close to the Army of Islam rebel group headquartered in Douma, reported that the man and his wife had been living in Syria for more than 40 years and were evacuated after months of negotiations.

Egeland, who heads humanitarian aid matters in the office of the U.N. Syria envoy, said the Russian plan for the five- hour pauses was “positive” but insufficient.

He said that no aid has been sent to eastern Ghouta because “we did not get a sin- gle facilitation letter by the government.”

“I know of no humanitar- ian actor ... who thinks that five hours is enough for us to be able to deliver relief into eastern Ghouta and to organize orderly medical evacu- ations out,” he said.

He said a meeting of the U.N.’s humanitarian task force for Syria earlier Thursday discussed the issue of: “Can we sit down now with Russia and others and see whether we can help make this pause/initiative meet humanitarian standards for a pause and a corridor.”

The eastern suburbs — a cluster of several towns and villages on Damascus’ eastern edge — have faced a deadly and brutal onslaught for weeks by Syrian government troops, backed by Russia.

The analysis appeared to reflect the ferocious fighting that has occurred in the suburb over the past month.

Re s id e nts of eastern Ghouta say they do not trust the Russia-declared truce and the U.N. and aid agencies have criticized the unilateral arrangement, saying it gave no guarantees of safety for residents wishing to leave.

Britain urged the LONDON —

European Union to be constructive and the EU told the U.K. to get realistic, as the divorcing partners differed Thursday over the Irish border and their post-Brexit economic relationship.

Conservative British Prime Minister Theresa May met European Council President Donald Tusk at 10 Downing St. in London, a day before the British leader makes a speech she said will outline “our proposals for the future economic partnership” with the EU.

In a statement after her meeting with Tusk, May’s office said she “hoped that European leaders would engage with this thinking constructively.”

Downing St. characterized the meeting, over a lunch of poached lemon sole, as “positive and constructive.”

But Tusk and other top EU officials have expressed increasing frustration with Britain’s stance, which many in the bloc see as vague and unrealistic.

Tusk said as the meeting started that he was “not happy” with May’s negotiating “red lines,” which include leaving the EU’s single market and customs union.

The U.K. is due to leave the EU in March 2019, but the two sides have yet to nego- tiate new arrangements for trade, security, aviation and a host of other fields.

Chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier said Thursday that British officials should stop pretending “that the U.K. could obtain a free trade deal with the EU with all the benefits of the single market without the obli- gations.”

“Abandoning such ideas will enable us to begin build- ing an ambitious future partnership based on the foundation of realism,” he told a business gathering in Brussels.

British aims have been left vague so far — more than 18 months after the coun- try voted to leave the EU — because May’s Conserva- tive government is divided. Some ministers want a clean break with the EU, while oth- ers hope to retain close eco- nomic alignment with the bloc to cushion the shock of Brexit.

British ambiguity collided

The U.K. is due to leave the EU in March 2019, but the two sides have yet to negotiate new arrangements for trade, security, aviation and a host of other fields.

this week with the hard problem of the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, which will be the only land frontier between the U.K. and the EU after Brexit.

Britain and the bloc agreed in December that there would be no customs posts or other impediments along the all-but-invisible border.

The EU says Britain has not set out how that can be achieved, so it made its own proposal Wednesday — which Britain rejected. May said the plan, which would keep Northern Ireland inside the EU’s customs union, would “undermine the constitutional integrity of the U.K.”

Tusk said he was keen to hear whether the British government had a better solution.

Before meeting May, he said “no one has come up with anything wiser” than the option outlined in the EU’s draft Brexit withdrawal text, which aims to keep people, goods, services and money flowing between the U.K.’s territory and EU member Ireland.