DUSHANBE, February 4, 2016, Asia-Plus — Syrian peace talks in Geneva have been suspended and Syria”s government and the opposition have blamed each other for the suspension of the talks.
According to
BBC
, UN envoy Staffan de Mistura called a temporary pause, saying the talks would resume on 25 February.
Announcing the suspension of the talks, Mr. de Mistura admitted “there”s more work to be done.”
But he said “it is not the end and it is not the failure of the talks.”
The opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC), however, soon cast doubts over whether they would return.
“The whole world sees who is making the negotiations fail. Who is bombing civilians and starving people to death,” the HNC”s chief coordinator Riad Hijab said.
For its part, the Syrian government said the talks” suspension was down to the opposition.
The head of the Syrian delegation, Bashar Jaafari, accused them of acting under the orders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey “to bring about the talks” failure,” Syrian state television reported.
Meanwhile France accused the Syrian government and Russia, who has been carrying out air strikes in support of President Assad, of “torpedoing” the peace talks.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Moscow and Damascus “visibly don”t want to contribute to them in good faith.”
The US also said Russia was partly to blame for the suspension, saying its air strikes were deliberately targeting opposition groups.
Both the US and France have condemned Russian bombing around Syria”s second city of Aleppo, and U.S. Secretary of State Kerry repeated his demand for the bombardment to stop.
But earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed that it would not stop the air strikes “until we really defeat terrorist organizations like al-Nusra Front”.
More than 250,000 people have reportedly died in almost five years of war in Syria.
Eleven million others have fled their homes as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and those opposed to his rule battle each other, as well as the Islamic State group.
The civil war has also been a major driving force behind Europe”s migration crisis.
