UN Envoy Says Syria Talks Failure Brings ‘No More Hope’
KABUL: (MEP) UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura has warned If the Syria peace talks in Geneva fail, the people of the country will have no more hope as the main opposition coalition announced that it would not attend a scheduled meeting with the envoy.
Speaking in an interview with Swiss television RTS, de Mistura said Failure “is always possible, particularly after five years of a horrible war, where the sides hate each other, where there is a huge lack of confidence.”
“If there is a failure this time after we made the attempt twice at conferences in Geneva, there will be no more hope for the Syrian people,” de Mistura added.
UN envoy stressed that we must do utmost to ensure that there is no failure.
His remarks came as the so-called High Negotiations Committee (HNC) cancelled a scheduled meeting with the UN envoy, saying, “At this moment, there is no reason to repeat ourselves with de Mistura.”
The delivery of humanitarian aid to Syria is impossible when there is no ceasefire, de Mistura said adding, “Without ceasefire the humanitarian aid will not be sent, today the humanitarian aid does not reach (those who need it) not due to the rain or bad weather.”
He said the only way to deliver humanitarian aid to needy people in the country is to come together and end the combat actions that have claimed more than 250,000 lives since 2011, according to the United Nations.
The gathering was to be the opposition delegation’s second meeting with the Swedish-Italian diplomat as part of the UN-brokered Geneva negotiations aimed at finding a political solution to the deadly conflict in Syria.
