The UN Security Council will hold today two separate meetings to discuss the humanitarian situation in Syria and the initiative put forward by the UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura who will host talks with rival sides in Syria from May 4 in a bid to kickstart stalled negotiations to end the four-year conflict. De Mistura will also review the results of his meetings with various Syrian and international parties.
Representatives of UN humanitarian agencies will present reports on the humanitarian situation and refugee crisis in Syria. Angelina Jolie, special envoy for the U.N. on refugee issues, will headline a day of briefings that include the U.N. refugee and humanitarian chiefs to brief the U.N. Security Council on Syria’s refugee crisis.
“The Geneva consultation invitations have gone out a couple of days ago,” UN spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told reporters, saying the talks would last between four and six weeks and would be at “mostly ambassadorial level and expert level”.
The talks, to be hosted by UN peace envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, will take “stock of where we are now, almost three years after the Geneva communique was adopted and ratified on June 2012,” he said.
Consultations are still in the preliminary stages, while de Mistura will brief members of the UN Security Council on meetings he is going to hold with each party in a bid to implement the Geneva communique.
The current diplomatic efforts are focused on finding common ground and unified interpretations of the provisions of the Geneva communique.
Meanwhile, US ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power called upon the UN Security Council to conduct an investigation into reports about the use of chemical weapons in Syria and stressed the need to hold perpetrators of such crimes to account.
Vice-President of the Syrian Coalition Hisham Marwa earlier said that Assad’s welcoming of UN envoy de Mistura’s initiatives is no more than a publicity stunt aimed at covering up his crimes against the Syrian people, the latest of which is the chlorine gas attack on Sarmin in Idlib province. He clearly exploits every initiative to gain more time and wreak more chaos and terror in Syria and the region.” (Source: Syrian Coalition + Al-Sharq al-Awsat)
