WILAYAH NEWS VOICE OF THE GLOBAL AWAKENING
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Iranian President Hassan Rohani said Thursday that fair elections would be the best way of ending Syria’s civil war.
“The best solution is to organize free and fair elections inside Syria,” Rohani told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “No outside party or power should decide for the Syrian people and Syria as a country.”
“No outside party or power should decide for the Syrian people and Syria as a country.”
Describing a conflict that has been raging for nearly three years as a “major catastrophe”, Rohani said Iran was deeply concerned by the influx of foreign fighters he described as “terrorists” into Syria.
“Millions of innocent people have been killed, maimed or made homeless – it is a miserable situation and very sad,” Rouhani said.
“All of us should work together to push terrorists out of Syria and advise the countries who support them that this is not their own best interests – their next stop will be their own countries.”
The World Economic Forum is taking place only several kilometers away from the “Geneva II” peace talks in Montreux, in which Syrian government and opposition figures meet for the first time since the beginning of the almost three-year old civil war.
UN efforts to involve Iran in the Syria peace talks foundered as a result of objections from the United States and the opposition.
The Geneva II peace conference opened on Wednesday, with delegations on either side of the conflict exchanging accusations of terrorism and torture.
UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi meets Syria’s warring sides behind closed doors Thursday to gauge if they are willing to sit down face-to-face.
Brahimi will hold separate meetings with delegations from President Bashar al-Assad’s government and the opposition before full talks resume in Geneva on Friday.
Expectations are very low for a breakthrough at the conference, but diplomats believe that simply bringing the two sides together for the first time is a mark of some progress and could be an important first step.
With no one ready for serious concessions, world powers will be looking for short-term deals to keep the process moving forward, including on localized ceasefires, freer humanitarian access and prisoner exchanges.
Brahimi said he “had indications” from both sides that they were willing discuss these issues.
The UN humanitarian chief said the international body hoped political talks between the warring sides in Syria would clinch local ceasefires to allow vital food and medicines to reach millions of civilians.
“I have discussed this with Mr. Brahimi and he’ll continue to push this. Because political negotiations can take a very long time. And as we saw yesterday, there are big differences between the parties,” Valerie Amos said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday.
“But if we are able to get a major push on getting into these communities, it would make a significant difference.”
She said it was crucial to gain access to some 250,000 people trapped in besieged communities, many of them in Aleppo, Homs and near Damascus, who have been out of reach for many months. Some say they have been reduced to eating grass in order to avoid starvation.
Another 2.5 million people are in “hard-to-reach” areas, having received UN relief supplies just once or so, Amos said.
“The key issue for us is that control of communities shifts all the time. We want to really take advantage when there is a sense we can move very quickly to try to do that,” she said, adding that she had met with an opposition delegate in Montreux.
Amos, who submitted a confidential written brief to the UN Security Council last Friday, said that there had been little improvement since world powers called unanimously in October for both sides to grant greater access for aid workers and convoys.
“I indicated to the Security Council, as I have done before, that we have made some modest progress on administrative hurdles that we have faced, things like visas for staff and arrangements in place in terms of clearance (for convoys),” Amos said.
“But on the really big-ticket items, like protection of civilians, demilitarization of schools and hospitals, access to besieged and hard-to-reach communities, there has been little or no progress at all,” she said.
Hadi Al-Bahra, a member of the opposition Syrian National Coalition’s delegation, said they would be meeting with Brahimi in Geneva to work out the details of Friday’s talks.
Bahra told AFP the opposition was feeling confident after the government delegation adopted an aggressive tone for the start of the conference.
“What happened yesterday was clearly in our interest. We have heard very positive feedback from inside Syria and it is the first time we’ve felt so much support from Syrians for the Coalition,” Bahra said.
UN officials were forced to ask Syrian journalists to calm down during Ban’s closing press conference on Wednesday, after they loudly complained of not being allowed to ask questions.
The opposition arrived in Switzerland with a sole aim – toppling Assad – while the government says any talk of removing the Syrian leader is a “red line” it will not cross.
Source: Al-Akhbar