The New York Times
GENEVA — The United Nations special envoy for Syria on Friday called for urgent intervention by the United States, Russia and other powers to save fragile peace talks threatened by escalating hostilities and stalled negotiations.
The envoy, Staffan de Mistura, said a partial cease-fire that came into effect at the end of February was still in effect but “in great trouble if we don’t act quickly.” He added that a meeting of the International Syria Support Group led by Russia and the United States, which brokered the truce, was “urgently required.”
His comments came at the end of a week in which opposition negotiators pulled out of formal peace talks to protest mounting violations of the truce and the government’s refusal to allow deliveries of humanitarian aid to civilians trapped by fighting.
Airstrikes on Friday hit insurgent-held areas in Aleppo, where residents counted at least 11 airstrikes in eight neighborhoods, in addition to attacks by surface-to-surface missiles, that left at least 16 people dead, Adnan Hadad, an antigovernment activist in the city, said in an Internet chat.
Rescue workers and residents called it the most intense day of bombing since a partial truce was announced at the end of February.
Despite a flurry of activity in the past two days that brought about the evacuation of 500 people in need of medical care from besieged towns in Syria, and delivery of aid to the town of Rastan, the situation on the ground remained dire. The United Nations acknowledged this week that since the start of the year it had reached fewer than half the people in towns mostly besieged by government forces, and even fewer — barely seven percent — in so-called hard-to-reach areas.
Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special envoy to Syria, said Friday in Geneva that a cease-fire was in grave peril without urgent action. Credit Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The apparent impasse of the Geneva talks has shifted diplomats’ attention to a proposed ministerial meeting of the 17-member group of global and regional powers most engaged in the Syrian crisis. This meeting could take place at the end of the month, possibly in New York, but diplomats said a date and location had yet to be agreed upon.
United States officials have said that Russia had moved artillery to support an offensive by Syrian government forces on Aleppo, increasing their concerns about the level of Moscow’s commitment to using its influence with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, to make progress in the talks.
Mr. de Mistura said he would continue his meetings in Geneva, probably until Wednesday, but he acknowledged that both sides are “extremely polarized.” Diplomats monitoring the talks have said that they did not expect much in the coming days.
The High Negotiation Committee, representing a coalition of opposition groups, withdrew most of its negotiators in Geneva over the past two days, and said there was little point in returning to formal talks until there was a clear commitment from the Syrian government to talk about a political transition that does not include Mr. Assad. So far the government has offered only a government of national unity, interpreted by opposition negotiators to mean they would be offered a few cabinet positions in a government still led by Mr. Assad.
Mr. de Mistura said he would meet the Syrian government’s top negotiator, Bashar Jaafari, on Monday to discuss the proposal for a government of national unity, but he acknowledged that after five meetings he still did not understand what the government proposal entails.
“Is this going to be cosmetic, is this going to be real, and if it is real what does it mean for the opposition?” he asked.
As government warplanes stepped up attacks on the insurgent-held suburbs of Damascus, one crashed southeast of the city, according to antigovernment activists. Russia’s semiofficial Interfax news agency confirmed the report and said the plane was a MIG-23.
Islamic State — the extremist militant group, which was never party to the partial cease-fire — claimed in a news release issued on social media to have captured the plane’s pilot. The group released video that showed its fighters around the wreckage of a plane, but it did not show the pilot, and there was no word from the Russian or Syrian governments on whether a pilot was missing.