| New York Times | - |
GENEVA - The second round of Syria
peace talks deadlocked in acrimony and frustration on Friday, as the
government delegation appeared to rule out any compromise with the
opposition, throwing the future of the negotiations into more doubt.
GENEVA
— The second round of Syria peace talks deadlocked in acrimony and
frustration on Friday, as the government delegation appeared to rule out
any compromise with the opposition, throwing the future of the
negotiations into more doubt.
Members
of the opposition delegation called on the United States and Russia,
the two major sponsors of the talks, to find ways to move forward, and
said there was a small possibility of a final meeting between the
antagonists on Saturday. But the prevailing mood was grim.
The
impasse in Geneva came as the United Nations human rights office warned
of new deprivations and civilian uprooting inside Syria and
antigovernment activists in the country reported new mayhem, including a
large car bombing in the south that killed dozens and the execution of
21 people carried out by Al Qaeda-linked jihadists in the north.
There
had been some hope that the second round of talks in Geneva, which
began on Monday, would make some progress on an agenda aimed at ending
the nearly three-year-old conflict or at least finding a way to allow
unfettered humanitarian aid to reach hundreds of thousands of Syrian
civilians in combat zones.
The
opposition delegation offered what appeared to be a significant
compromise, or at least a softened tone, on Wednesday. While asserting
in a 24-point proposal that the talks focus on creating a transitional
government, the opposition’s language, for the first time, did not
specifically demand that President Bashar al-Assad be excluded from such
a government.
But
Mr. Assad’s negotiators, who have insisted that the talks should focus
on fighting terrorism, did not even read the compromise, diplomats said.
Fayssal
Mekdad, Syria’s deputy foreign minister and lead negotiator in the
talks, said on Friday that all those who “carry arms against their
people and their government are terrorists,” a position that appeared to
rule out any common ground with Mr. Assad’s opponents.
Mr.
Mekdad also rebuked Valerie Amos, the United Nations relief
coordinator, over her report to the Security Council on Wednesday.
Although she blamed all sides for obstructing efforts to provide
emergency food and medicine to Syrian civilians, she used her strongest
language yet, denouncing attacks on aid workers and accusing both the
government and the insurgents of flagrant violations of humanitarian
law.
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Mr. Mekdad called Ms. Amos’s comments “unacceptable,” signaling a new tension over the relief issue.
The
Syrian opposition, backed by the United States and other Western
powers, has accused Mr. Assad’s side of deliberately denying aid to
civilians as part of a broader strategy to starve the insurgency into
submission. But efforts to coerce the government to allow aid through a
binding United Nations Security Council resolution are considered
unclear at best.
Frustration
has reached the point where John Kerry, the American secretary of
state, said during a visit to China on Friday that President Obama had
asked aides to develop new policy options on Syria.
Mr.
Kerry did not elaborate on such options, but his remarks were seen as a
possible effort to pressure Russia, Mr. Assad’s principal defender, to
exert more influence on the Syrian government side.
Russian
officials, for their part, accused the Syrian opposition’s Western
backers on Friday of focusing solely on “regime change,” suggesting that
Russia was unwilling or unable to soften the Syrian government’s
negotiating position. Russian diplomats say they are not committed to
maintaining Mr. Assad’s hold on power, but they insist on continuity in
the government.
The
United Nations diplomat who has been mediating the talks, Lakhdar
Brahimi, signaled his own frustration with the Syrian government side on
Thursday, according to two Western diplomats.
Mr. Brahimi, they said, had complained that the Syrian delegation refused to even touch, let alone read, the 24-point plan presented by the opposition on Wednesday. Instead, they said, the government delegates left the paper on the table and walked away.
The inability to even agree on an agenda was “a very bad omen” for the Geneva process, one Western diplomat said.
Video|3:21
Ahmad Aboud/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Syrian Opposition, Explained
There are believed to be hundreds, if not
thousands, of groups fighting in Syria. These opposition groups are
fighting the Assad regime, but recently turned on each other with
increased ferocity.
“We
expected that the talks would be difficult,” he said. “We didn’t expect
that they would be unable to compromise on an agenda, and that,
frankly, is not good.”
Mr.
Brahimi, he said, might call off the third round if he is concerned
about his personal credibility in presiding over an empty process.
But
other Western diplomats here noted that Mr. Brahimi is famously patient
and that the Russians would not welcome a collapse of the talks,
particularly if it happened during the Winter Olympic Games underway in
Sochi.
At
the United Nations on Friday, Security Council diplomats said they
would meet later to discuss two competing draft resolutions on Syrian
humanitarian aid: one from Russia, and a more strongly worded one from
Australia, Jordan and Luxembourg. There was some hope that they could be
reconciled, but the prospects were unclear.
In
Syria, antigovernment activists and state television reported a car
bomb exploded in the southern town of Yadouda near the Jordanian border.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group with a
network of contacts in the country, said at least 32 people were killed including 10 insurgents and a child.
The
group also said the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a particularly
violent Al Qaeda splinter group that has antagonized others in the
Syrian insurgency, had executed 17 rival rebel fighters in the town of
Haritan, northwest of Aleppo, and thrown their corpses into a well. Four
others were reported beheaded in Azaz, another town north of Aleppo.
The
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, known by its acronym ISIS, has been
increasingly blamed for worsening relations among anti-Assad group. Even
the leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, has denounced the group for
its violent methods. Earlier this month Al Qaeda’s central leadership officially cut ties with ISIS.
Anne Barnard
reported from Geneva, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was
contributed by Somini Sengupta from the United Nations and Michael R.
Gordon from New York.end quote from:
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