The future of the biggest push to date to end Syria’s brutal civil war looked highly uncertain yesterday, with the main opposition group threatening to walk away before planned peace talks even begin in earnest.
Representatives from the umbrella body for mainstream opposition groups, who arrived in Geneva late on Saturday, are refusing for now to enter the hoped-for talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
The High Negotiations Committee (HNC) yesterday met with UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura to demand that humanitarian aid first get through to besieged towns, that bombing of civilians ceases and that hundreds of prisoners are released.
“If the regime insists on continuing to commit these crimes, then the HNC delegation’s presence in Geneva will not be justified,” coordinator Riad Hijab said in a statement in Arabic posted online on Saturday.
“The delegation will inform De Mistura of its intentions to withdraw its negotiating team if the UN and world powers are unable to stop these violations,” he said.
Highlighting the dire humanitarian situation, Medecins Sans Frontieres on Saturday said 16 more people had starved to death in Madaya, one of more than a dozen towns under blockade by regime or rebel forces.
More than 4.5 million people with “immense humanitarian needs” are living in areas extremely hard to access because of fighting, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
On Friday, the scheduled start of a planned six months of talks, protesters in Geneva highlighted the plight of ordinary Syrians with “siege soup” of grass and leaves.
The war that has killed more than 260,000 people since 2011 is a complex conflict that has sucked in — on different sides — Turkey, Iran and Persian Gulf states, as well as Western countries and, since September last year, Russia.
The chaos in Syria has allowed the extremist Islamic State group to overrun swathes of Syria and also Iraq, giving it a base to launch attacks the world over, most notably in Paris on Nov. 13 last year, killing 130 people.
Half of Syria’s population have fled their homes, forcing millions to seek refuge in neighboring countries and also in Europe, where the influx is proving to be a major political and social headache.
The intra-Syrian negotiations, if they get going, are part of an ambitious road map set out in November last year in Vienna by all the external powers involved.
The process envisions elections within 18 months, but leaves unresolved the future of al-Assad, whose regime has been making gains on the ground since Russia began supporting him with airstrikes in September.
Another thorny issue is which rebel groups are to be involved in the talks, although all sides agree on the exclusion of extremists from the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front, which is tied to al-Qaeda.
Ahrar al-Sham, one of the most controversial groups in the HNC because of its ties to al-Nusra, was not represented in Geneva, HNC spokesman Riad Naasan Agha said.
The powerful Army al-Islam rebel group “is here, they are a negotiator,” Agha told reporters, but said HNC chief negotiator and Army al-Islam member Mohammed Alloush had not arrived yet.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique