Syria’s warring parties kick off new round of talks
Syria’s warring parties kick off new round of talks
BEIRUT: Extremist Islamic rebels who overran a village in central Syria populated by the Alawite minority have killed at least 40 people, activists said yesterday. Half of the victims in Sunday’s attack were civilians, including women, while the other half were village fighters defending their homes in Maan in the province of Hama, said the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Syrian state media described the attack as a “massacre” perpetrated by terrorists, a term the government uses to describe rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad. Extremist Sunni Islamic fighters have come to dominate the armed uprising against Assad, who is a member of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The raid on Maan is likely to bolster efforts by the government delegation to convey their narrative at the Geneva peace talks that the three-year uprising to overthrow Assad is dominated by Al-Qaeda extremists. The extremists see Alawites as apostates who should be killed.
Meanwhile, Syria’s warring sides launched a new round of peace talks yesterday, as an agreement from the first round last month was being implemented with aid convoys evacuating the besieged city of Homs. The UN and Arab League mediator, veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, began the lat- est session in Geneva by shuttling between the government and opposition teams.
It was not clear when or if the two sides would sit down for the sort of mediated face-to-face negotiations they held for a week in January. Brahimi hopes to capitalize on the Homs agreement to find some way of closing the vast divide separating representatives from President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime and the fractured opposition. There was little optimism that the tone would be more constructive this time. Both sides have shown themselves to be obstinate and quick to engage in blaming the other side.
This time, Brahimi wants to nudge the teams towards discussion of the core issues: stopping fighting and agreeing a transitional government in Damascus. The initial round late last month was the first time the Syrian government and opposition sat down face-toface since the outbreak of their vicious war nearly three years ago. More than 136,000 people have been killed and millions driven from their homes. The government side is again headed by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem while the opposition negotiators were headed by Hadi Al-Bahra.
Syrian state daily Al-Watan said its sources expected “no progress”, after the first round “failed... due to the stubbornness of the coalition’s delegation.” A source in the opposition delegation said it planned to submit a report about the Assad regime’s “violence, crimes against humanity and state terrorism”. The report claims among other things that the regime, especially through its campaign of “barrel bombs”-canisters of high explosive dropped by aircraft-has killed more than 1,800 people since the beginning of the first round of talks in Switzerland on January 22.
Push to end war The so-called Geneva II talksspurred by the United States, which backs the opposition, and Russia, a key ally of Syria-mark the biggest international push so far to end the war. The aim is to build on an international conference held in Geneva in 2012 which did not include both the warring parties but ended up with world powers calling for political transition in Syria. That issue is highly contentious in the Geneva II talks. While the opposition sees a transitional governing body as excluding any role for Assad, the Syrian government insists that the president’s future is not up for negotiation.
The regime delegation instead maintains that the negotiations must be about stopping the violence and “terrorism”-its term for the revolt, which it says has been fuelled by foreign jihadists and Gulf money. The opposition, in turn, wants discussions to address regime actions such as starving out opposition-held areas, raining explosives-packed “barrel bombs” from helicopters, and deploying fighters from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militia.
“Fighting terrorism for the Syrian people (means fighting) the terrorism of the regime who resorts to warplanes, rockets and barrel bombs,” National Coalition secretary general Badr Jamous said in a statement yesterday. The ceasefire permitting the Homs operation proved fragile on Saturday, when the first aid convoy coming under attack and mortar shells raining down on a rebel-held district on Sunday, killing five people. Red Crescent teams on Sunday managed nevertheless to evacuate some 600 people. — Agencies