GENEVA, Feb 12: Syria peace talks headed into a third day on today after sparking warnings of failure, but the evacuation of civilians from besieged rebel-held areas of the city of Homs was set to resume.
Little progress towards breaking the deadlock was apparent yesterday, despite appeals from UN-Arab League mediator Lakhdar Brahimi to end the “nightmare” of the Syrian people.
The veteran peacemaker was downbeat after a three-hour session in Geneva yesterday marking the first face-to-face talks between Syria’s rival camps this month.
“The beginning of this week is as laborious as it was the first week,” Brahimi told reporters. “We are not making much progress.”
The current round of talks is set to last until Friday.
But it got off to a shaky start on Monday, and yesterday’s session did not appear to achieve anything beyond a restating of well-known positions.
“I think Geneva under the current circumstances will end in failure,” Ali Haidar, Syria’s reconciliation minister, told reporters in Damascus.
Opposition spokesman Louay Safi said his side would not “run away”, but that without progress it would be “more honest to say we have failed”.
A first round was held in Geneva from January 24-31, when simply getting the foes to the table for the first time since the war erupted in 2011 was deemed a breakthrough.
But neither side has budged.
The opposition says the only way to end the conflict is to form a transitional Government – without President Bashar al-Assad.
The regime insists Assad’s future is non-negotiable and that the talks must focus on halting “terrorism” – its term for a revolt it says is fuelled by foreign jihadists and Gulf money.
In Geneva, key Assad aide Buthaina Shaaban blasted the opposition for refusing to “acknowledge that there is terrorism in Syria”.
“The only thing they want to discuss is the transitional Government,” she told reporters.
The opposition, which notes that the mainstream Free Syrian Army rebels are themselves fighting the jihadists, rejects the broadbrush terror label applied by the regime.
It wants discussions to address regime actions such as starving out opposition-held areas and raining explosives-packed “barrel bombs” from helicopters.
Also yesterday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed “great shock” over reports of a massacre Sunday in the Syrian village of Maan.
“The secretary-general… Calls for the perpetrators of this massacre, and all other crimes in Syria, to be brought to justice,” said a statement released by Ban’s spokesman.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 25 members of Assad’s Alawite sect were killed by Islamist fighters in Maan, in Hama province.
The group said most of the dead were pro-regime militiamen, but state television reported a “massacre” of 10 women. (AGENCIES)
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