Diplomats focus on humanitarian aid first, Syria peace talks second
After Syria peace talks in Geneva suspended, diplomats look to world powers to agree on aid access and humanitarian deliverables at a meeting of the International Syria Support Group in Munich on Feb. 11 to try to revive a diplomatic process.
WASHINGTON — The seemingly doomed Syria peace talks, suspended by the UN envoy in Geneva on Feb. 3, may get a boost if world powers can agree on humanitarian aid deliverables at a meeting in Munich next week, diplomats hope.
The United States won’t stand for “talk for the sake of talk in order to continue the bombing” in Syria, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Feb. 5. He added that it would be known “in the course of the next days” whether or not Russia was serious.
Diplomats said they would try to resurrect efforts to negotiate humanitarian aid access to 18 besieged areas and toward a Syria cease-fire at a meeting of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) foreign ministers in Munich on Feb. 11. This is happening just as Russian-backed Syrian army troops made advances on Aleppo that could soon cut Syrian rebels off from their supply routes to Turkey.
Kerry said Russia was obliged to use its leverage with the Syrian government to get it to provide the humanitarian access called for in a UN Security Council resolution unanimously agreed to on Dec. 18. This is a point Kerry said he pressed in a “robust” phone conversation with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Feb. 4, a day after the Geneva talks broke down.
