US Secretary of State John Kerry talks to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov before the start of the meeting on Syria at a hotel in New York yesterday, as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon looks on.
Agencies
United Nations
The five UN Security Council veto powers have agreed the text of a draft resolution to endorse an international road map for a Syria peace process and the 15-member body was expected to adopt it later in the day, diplomats said.
US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, was phoning each of the remaining 10 members of the council to brief them on the text, said diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The four-page draft backs a nationwide ceasefire in Syria to come into effect “as soon as the representatives of the Syrian government and the opposition have begun initial steps towards a political transition under UN auspices”.
It also asks UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to report back within one month on options for a ceasefire monitoring, verification and reporting mechanism.
The draft asked the United Nations to convene representatives of the Syrian government and opposition for formal negotiations with a target start date of January.
It “demands that all parties immediately cease any attacks against civilians and civilian objects” and “stresses that the Syrian people will decide the future of Syria.”
The opposition wants a political transition without Assad, the co-ordinator of an opposition negotiating body in the planned peace talks said yesterday.
Riad Hijab, elected on Thursday as co-ordinator by an opposition body set up in Saudi Arabia last week, said Security Council resolutions and the Geneva 1 road map drawn up in 2012 provided for a political transition in Syria without the president and a transitional governing council with full executive powers.
“We are going into negotiations on this principle, we are not entering talks (based on) anything else. There will be no concession,” he told reporters yesterday.
On Thursday, Hijab, who defected from Assad’s government in 2012, won the backing of more than two thirds of the 34 delegates of opposition groups summoned to Riyadh by world powers in a bid to unite them and settle long-standing rivalries.
The new body includes representatives of fighting groups such as the powerful Islamist Ahrar al-Sham and Free Syrian Army units.
Hijab said the body had formed a negotiating delegation and committees that would deal with legal issues and international affairs and support, Saudi state news agency SPA reported.
He said that before any negotiations, Assad’s forces must implement trust-building measures like releasing prisoners, especially women and children, stopping barrel bombings and allowing humanitarian aid.
“We will not accept any pressure. The aims of the revolution and the international resolutions, we cling to them, and we will not give them up,” Hijab said.
“I call it a battle in terms of the negotiation process and the political process. It is in tandem with what is happening on the ground,” he added.
“Our first option is the peaceful option. But if it’s not complete, the other option will continue and will not stop ... until it fulfils the aims of toppling the illegitimate regime.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said yesterday suspected Russian air strikes have killed 46 civilians, mostly women and children, in northern Syria.
Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said warplanes had bombarded Raqa, the Islamic State group’s de facto Syrian capital, as well as the towns of Azaz and Al Bab in Aleppo province, on Thursday.
Six children and 11 women were among the dead, and dozens of people were wounded, the Britain-based monitor said.
The toll in Raqa also included two rescue workers, according to Abdel Rahman, but he said no suspected militants were killed in the three areas hit.
In the northwestern Idlib province, air raids on Jisr al-Shughur town “probably by Russian planes” killed at least 14 people—seven children and seven women—according to Abdel Rahman.
The town is controlled by Islamist rebels.
