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Roundup: UN Special Envoy aiming for July resumption of Syria peace talks

Xinhua, June 23, 2016 Adjust font size:

The UN Special Envoy for Syria announced Thursday that he will brief the UN Security Council on June 29 after holding consultations in New York and Washington in view of resuming intra-Syrian talks aiming to broker an end to the five-year conflict next month.

"We have to continue preparing for various options regarding the intra-Syrian talks," he said after convening with the humanitarian taskforce members in Geneva's UN headquarters.

"The aim is still July because August is not a fictional date but a real timetable," he added.

The UN mediator has been vying to get intra-Syrian talks back on track since negotiations seeking to reach a political agreement by August 1 were put on hold in April this year.

Both the humanitarian situation in the country at war since 2011 and fighting between government troops, opposition forces and terrorist factions have prevented negotiations from resuming.

The envoy did report however some improvement on the humanitarian front in June, a month which has seen eight out of 18 besieged areas receive critical assistance.

Since relief operations kicked off in February this year, 16 out of the 18 besieged areas have received life-saving assistance, though Arbin and Zamalka located in rural Damascus have yet to be reached.

Latest UN figures show that over 844,000 people living in both hard-to-reach and besieged locations in Syria have received assistance since the start of 2016.

De Mistura warned that this was still not enough and that ongoing military operations in Aleppo and Idlib continued to compound the dire outlook on the ground.

In light of this, he urged members of the International Syria Support Group, particularly its two co-chairs the United States and Russia, to enhance efforts seeking to provide tangible results for the Syrian people.

Referring to the truce brokered in February which resulted in a historic lull in fighting, the Special Envoy reminded that such initiatives could lay the foundations for substantive talks going forward.

"Don't forget, the cessation of hostilities took place when Russia and the U.S. agreed on something, and that produced a critical mass," he said.

"We're looking for the same type of critical mass on the beginning of the political transition," the diplomat added. Endit