No Aid Progress Seen in Face-to-Face Syria Peace Talks
By ANNE BARNARD
Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Monzer Akbik, a spokesman for the opposition delegation, arrived for face-to-face peace talks in Geneva on Monday.
The Syrian opposition said on Monday that a government proposal to allow
women and children out of blockaded areas in Homs was an attempt to
depopulate the area and arrest opponents.
GENEVA
— The Syrian opposition delegation attending peace talks here condemned
on Monday the government’s proposal to allow women and children to
leave blockaded areas in Homs, calling the proposal a ploy to depopulate
the area and arrest President Bashar al-Assad’s opponents.
The
opposition said the government’s proposal concerning the old city of
Homs, a resilient epicenter of anti-Assad sentiment in the nearly
3-year-old Syria conflict, was not a substitute for allowing
international aid convoys to enter the area, as United Nations mediators
have proposed. The opposition’s international backers said that
international law required the Syrian government to allow unimpeded aid
access without conditions.
“It
is a simple thing they can and must do, but so far they have refused to
allow humanitarian convoys into the Old City,” said Edgar Vasquez, a
State Department spokesman here. “The armed fighters in the Old City
have made clear that they will allow these convoys in. Thus, there
should be no reason for delay. The regime must act now.”
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But
Syrian officials called the focus on Homs a minor issue and said that
they were doing everything possible to aid people throughout the
country, an assertion strongly disputed by some United Nations aid
organizations.
That
left the two sides no closer to an agreement on Homs, or anything else
other than consenting to sit in the same room on the third day of
face-to-face talks, which were adjourned in the early evening by Lakhdar
Brahimi, the special envoy on Syria from the United Nations. Mr.
Brahimi told a news conference afterward that despite the lack of
progress, both sides had agreed to resume on Tuesday.
“My
expectation from this conference is that the unjust war will stop,” he
told reporters. “But I know this is not going to happen today or
tomorrow or next week.”
The
back-and-forth over Homs puts at risk the fragile gains the exile
opposition coalition says it is making at the conference. Its officials
say that the mere fact of sitting down with the government on an
international stage has increased their credibility with Syrians inside
the country, who have long criticized it as disconnected from fighters
and civilians on the ground and unable to deliver any help.
At
the same time, many government opponents inside Syria say the talks are
a distraction that further legitimizes the government and that neither
side will deliver on any agreements. Western diplomats acknowledge that
the opposition coalition lacks control over many fighting forces on the
ground, and that the government delegates have no decision-making power,
which ultimately rests with Mr. Assad.
Opposition
delegates and their Western backers here said that under international
law, civilians had a right to stay in their homes and to receive food
and medical aid. They said they had received guarantees from all the
armed opposition groups in Homs that they would not fire on aid convoys.
“What
the regime has proposed — an evacuation of women and children from the
Old City — is not sufficient,” Mr. Vasquez said in a statement.
“Civilians must be allowed to come and go freely, and the people of Homs
must not be forced to leave their homes and split up their families
before receiving much needed food and other aid.”
He
said that the government had long been carrying out a “kneel or starve”
campaign, a reference to slogans scrawled on concrete barriers at
government checkpoints isolating areas in the Damascus suburbs where
malnutrition has taken a growing number of lives. “For example, in
Moadhamiya, there was a limited evacuation but still no food aid or
other humanitarian assistance,” Mr. Vasquez said. “That cannot happen in
Homs.”
Jon
Wilks, a British diplomat involved in the talks, said in a Twitter
message: “Let’s keep it simple on Homs. Regime should let the
humanitarian convoy in. Then the population should decide to stay or
leave.”
Ahmad
al-Jarba, the opposition coalition president, said on Twitter that the
government had often employed a strategy “of allowing women &
children to leave, then massacring and imprisoning the men.”
The
opposition and its Western backers are calling on Russia to increase
pressure on the Syrian government. A Western diplomat here said that if
the convoy to Homs is not allowed by the end of the week, opponents of
Mr. Assad could return to the Security Council, where Russia and China,
his backers, have vetoed or diluted efforts to pressure the government,
both in allowing aid access and in condemning its human rights
violations.
“We
may have to take this back to the Security Council and say there is
clear noncompliance with what we have all agreed,” the diplomat said.
“Russia should do more with the regime, if the regime does not allow
this convoy in.”
He added, “This is the lowest-level test of whether the regime is going to do anything constructive in these negotiations.”
It
was impossible to ascertain how the Geneva diplomacy was resonating
with the besieged residents of Homs, once Syria’s third-largest city.
But some civilians there reached by phone said there appearunderwayno
preparations under way to either receive an aid convoy or start an
evacuation, and that many residents mistrusted both the government and
insurgents.
“We
don’t know yet if the fighters inside will be taking care of the
distribution, which means that civilians will get a small share,” said
one resident, Samer, a civilian. He said he had tried to convince a
woman suspicious of Mr. Assad’s motives to accept the government’s offer
to evacuate with her three children, but that she had refused.
“What
woman will accept to leave with her children and husband if she knows
that detention and rape are awaiting her?,” he quoted her as saying.
Opposition
delegates said the talks on Monday had been meant to focus on what they
considered the central issue of the conference: the establishment of a
transitional governing body for Syria with “full executive powers,”
chosen “by mutual consent.” But any advance on that issue appeared to
deadlock quickly.
Asked
to submit opening statements, the government produced a document
calling for the return of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, defending
Syrian sovereignty and suggesting that Syria is already a democracy
governed by the rule of law. The opposition rejected it, and presented
its own docucommuniquépy of the original Geneva communique of June 2012
that helped form the basis for the current talks.
Bouthaina
Shaaban, a close adviser to Mr. Assad, said in an interview that she
was surprised the opposition rejected the government’s s–tement. “There
is nothing to reject -- what are you, American?” she said.
Monzer
Akbik, an opposition spokesman, said the government document had
nothing to do with the purpose of the peace talks. “We respect the
international community and its resolutions,” he said. “If there is a
breakdown in the talks, it will not be us.”
Hwaida Saad and Hala Droubi contributed reporting from Geneva, and Rick Gladstone from New York.
COPY http://www.nytimes.com
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