Syria troops advance near Aleppo, amid frail UN peace bid

UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, who set a six-month timeframe for the much-anticipated talks that began on January 29, did not invite the Kurdish minority for the intra-Syrian negotiations.

AFAD said more than 150 migrants have been placed at a new camp in Guvecci, on the Turkish side of the border, while others have been sent to refugee camps in the border provinces of Gaziantep and Sanliurfa.

“We do have a principled position in the United Nations that no amnesties should be considered for those suspected of having committed crimes against humanity or war crimes”, UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein told reporters in Geneva.

A Syrian government meeting with Mr de Mistura was rescheduled to this morning until after he held his first official talks with the HNC.

Representatives of the main opposition High Negotiation Committee (HNC) – which includes political and militant opponents of President Bashar al-Assad – have warned that they will not negotiate unless the government stops bombarding civilian areas, lifts blockades and releases detainees.

“We’re not going home”, she said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov today welcomed the start of UN-sponsored Syria peace talks in Geneva, saying efforts to resolve the conflict were entering a crucial time.

The talks in Geneva are aimed at ending a five-year conflict that has killed 250,000 people and displaced millions, leaving vast swaths of the country in ruins.

The aid delivery appears to be an attempt toward a goodwill gesture after U.N.-mediated indirect peace talks got off to a rocky start in Geneva this week. “The regime wants to eliminate the opposition”.

He noted that in Vienna, where the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) – comprising the Arab League, the European Union, the United Nations, and 17 countries including the United States and Russian Federation – laid the groundwork for the Geneva talks, there was a message that “in parallel there should be a serious discussion about a ceasefire”.

The UK-based monitoring group also said the death toll from a suicide bombing in the government-controlled Sayyida Zeinab district had risen to more than 70.

“We are not here to have another Geneva talks”.

Commenting on the preliminary statements of the opposition and their threats to leave Geneva, Jaafari pointed “to the lack of seriousness in the other side’s approaches to the forthcoming negotiations”.

The government has criticized the makeup of the opposition delegation, specifically the presence of individuals from two hard-line Islamic groups – the Army of Islam and Ahrar al-Sham – that it considers terrorist groups.

The U.N. envoy stressed the need to show some improvement on the ground in Syria as the negotiations proceeded.

“The situation in the ground has not changed and as long as the situation stays like that there is no optimism from our side and no good intention to reach a solution by the regime”, Alloush said.