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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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| Information | | |
Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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14Mar14
Amid Preparations, Mediator Says Syria Vote Would Doom Talks
The United Nations mediator who has sought to coax the warring parties in Syria to negotiate an end to the three-year-old conflict said on Thursday that holding elections would doom prospects for any future talks, even as lawmakers in Damascus appeared to inch closer to scheduling national polls.
The Syria conflict, which has threatened to destabilize the Middle East, has also created what the United Nations has called the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
In a report released early Friday, the United Nations refugee agency said four out of 10 Syrians had been uprooted from their homes, making Syria "the world's leading country of forced displacement." More than 2.5 million are registered as refugees outside the country, mostly in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, while 6.5 million are internally displaced. Half of them are children.
"We would very much like to continue the Geneva process," the United Nations mediator, Lakhdar Brahimi, told reporters after a closed session of the Security Council, referring to two rounds of negotiations that have been held in the Swiss city. The last one ended without agreement even on an agenda for talks. Elections would defy one of the central premises for the negotiations: to discuss how to form an interim transitional government.
Mr. Brahimi took pains to say that while an election had not yet been scheduled, "there are lots of activities" to indicate planning for them.
"If there is an election, my suspicion is that the opposition -- all the opposition -- would probably not be interested in talking to the government," he said.
In Syria, Parliament unanimously approved a measure to allow for multiparty elections, including more than one candidate to run for president. The law is part of a new Constitution passed by referendum in March 2012, amid war, which the critics of President Bashar al-Assad dismissed as a ploy to hold on to power. Mr. Assad has not publicly said anything about plans to run for re-election, although other Syrian officials have suggested that is his intention. Mr. Assad's seven-year term ends in July.
Diplomats said that in the closed Security Council meeting Mr. Brahimi expressed stronger reservations about the attitude of the Syrian government. Sylvie Lucas, the ambassador from Luxembourg, who is president of the Council this month, said Mr. Brahimi told diplomats that "plans to hold elections in coming months would be incompatible" with any peace process.
Mr. Brahimi has said in the past that the intransigence of the government negotiators led to the stalled Geneva talks. He avoided ascribing blame on Thursday. Asked who was responsible for the stalemate, he said, "Probably me."
Council members had discussed issuing a statement in support of Mr. Brahimi's efforts to mediate. But according to Gérard Araud, France's ambassador to the United Nations, Russia opposed the text, which would have nudged the two sides to discuss their two principal issues: how to end terrorist attacks, which the Syrian government has asserted is its priority, and how to establish a transitional government, which is the opposition's. The Russian ambassador, Vitaly I. Churkin, declined to speak to reporters.
[Source: By Somini Sengupta, The New York Times, United Nations, 14Mar14]
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