UN ready to provide aid to Aleppo
THE UN is ready to move into the Syrian city of Aleppo with humanitarian aid as the Russian Federation backs a 48-hour humanitarian pause in and around the city.
However, before the UN moves in with the critically needed aid convoys, its envoys are waiting for others on the ground to follow suit in respecting the humanitarian pause.
“We are ready, trucks are ready and they can leave any time we get that message,” UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said in Geneva this week, where negotiations on humanitarian aid delivery and a cessation of hostilities were under way.
The task forces for these two subjects, created by the International Syria Support Group, have been meeting separately since early this year on a way forward on the crisis.
Russia and the US are the co- chairs of the support group, which comprises the UN, the Arab League, the EU and 16 other countries.
De Mistura said Russia had pledged support for the 48-hour pause, and humanitarian convoys were waiting for others to “do the same”.
The UN envoy, who has been mediating the intra-Syrian talks, did not comment on the political front, saying US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are expected to meet in Geneva – a meeting that he said would certainly have an impact on the course of the group’s discussions.
UN senior adviser Jan Egeland outlined the Aleppo emergency response plan’s three elements: first, sending two convoys of 20 trucks each with enough food for 80 000 people in eastern Aleppo via the Castello Road, the safest and most direct route.
The second is to have simultaneous distributions to western Aleppo, cross-line mostly from Damascus.
And the third is to use the 48hour pause to repair the electricity plant in the southern part of Aleppo that serves 1.8 million people and powers the pumping of water in the eastern and western parts of the city. – ANA