On Monday, pro-government forces overran opposition-held areas north of Aleppo city, disrupting supply lines and threatening to cut off rebel-held territories to the west, according to government and opposition accounts. Russian air strikes have killed almost 1,400 civilians since Moscow started its aerial campaign in support of Assad almost four months ago, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said on Saturday.
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In Jordan, UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said: “We expect both sides to participate in these talks in Geneva in good faith, and finally to provide the peace that the Syrian people deserve”.
Meanwhile, Syria’s opposition delegation at Geneva peace talks is waiting for the government negotiators to respond to a United Nations proposal on humanitarian steps “to end the suffering” in Syria, opposition spokesman Salim al-Muslat said on Monday.
De Mistura told reporters after meeting members of the main opposition bloc known as the Higher Negotiations Committee at a Geneva hotel on Sunday that “they deserve that I pay attention to their own concerns”.
For now De Mistura will meet with the government before going back to speak with opposition delegates.
De Mistura said his “first immediate priority” was “to ensure that the talks continue and that everyone is on board…it’s crucial that nobody is feeling excluded”.
The UN envoy for Syria on Monday declared the official start of peace negotiations in Switzerland aimed at charting a way out of the brutal and tangled civil war that has killed more than 260,000 people.
“We agreed – and the government delegation agreed – that if they take part in negotiations, they will do so in a personal capacity”, Lavrov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
The leader of the government delegation, Bashar al-Jaafari, said the opposition’s demands for what is essentially a cease-fire in Syria are meant to slow the peace process, adding the HNC is “not serious about peace”.
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan said through his Twitter account Sunday evening that Turkey had taken in 2,502 Turkmen and Arab refugees fleeing “bombings of the Syrian regime and its collaborator Russia” in the past three days. It was postponed, though, to let Mr De Mistura meet first with the opposition’s delegation.
The government has criticized the presence in the opposition delegation of individuals from two hard-line Islamic groups – the Army of Islam and Ahrar al-Sham – that it considers terrorist organizations.
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Russian Federation has played a pivotal role in organizing the current talks, along with the United States, and does not want to see them derailed.
