UN envoy pushes Syrian govt as peace talks intensify

While welcoming the “positive messages” from de Mistura, the HNC said today it was awaiting the outcome of his talks with Syrian government envoy Bashar al-Jaafari. “The regime will without doubt make some small signs,” HNC spokesman Munzer Makhous told AFP, saying the Madaya announcement was “designed to distract the international community’s attention.”

After his first official meeting with the HNC yesterday, De Mistura said it had a “very strong point” with its demands, saying the Syrian people “deserve to hear and see facts on the ground”. “When I meet the Syrian people they tell me: Don’t just have a conference, have also something that we can see and touch while you are meeting in Geneva,” he told reporters. De Mistura was today meeting with a 20-strong government delegation ahead of afternoon talks with the HNC “to go deeper into the issues”.

The Swedish-Italian diplomat said he expected the talks to be “complicated and difficult” but hoped they would “achieve something” by February 11 when key global players are to meet over the talks. Since the conflict began in March 2011, more than 260,000 people have died and more than half of Syria’s population have fled their homes, with the conflict dragging in a range of international players, from Turkey, Iran and the Gulf states to Western nations and Russia. The chaos has also fuelled the rise of the Islamic State (IS) extremist group which has overrun swathes of Syria and Iran and staged a raft of deadly attacks across the globe, including those in Paris in November.

US Secretary of State John Kerry was in Rome today meeting foreign ministers from the US-led coalition against IS to discuss efforts to combat the group which claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attacks at a revered Shiite shrine near Damascus that killed more than 70 people.