Aid convoys to be in Homs Monday, civilians can leave district - Brahimi
26 January 2014, 21:26
The first convoy to reach the northern city of Homs is expected to reach the besieged city as early as Monday after the Syrian government agreed to allow access to the city, UN Special envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, announced. 'So, hopefully, starting tomorrow women and children will leave the old city,' Brahimi told reporters, adding that other civilians will 'hopefully leave soon after that.'
Brahimi said that official Damascus has agreed to allow hundreds of tons of medical and food aid into Homs. The UN envoy also hoped that both sides of the conflict would be able to make ' a general statement about the way forward' at the upcoming political talks on Monday.
It has also been reported that the Syrian government delegation at peace talks in Geneva had announced the authorities would allow women and children to leave the besieged old district of Homs city straight away.
'What we have been told by the government side is that women and children in the besieged area of the old city are welcome to leave immmediately,' Brahimi told a news conference after talks with governent and opposition delegations.
The veteran diplomat said the opposition delegation, which has been calling on the government to release tens of thousands of detainees, had agreed to a government request to provide a list of detainees held by armed rebel groups.
Brahimi also said he would meet the two sides jointly on Monday, when they are expected to discuss opposition demands for the creation of a transitional executive body.
Syrian negotiators to hold separate political talks - delegate
Syrian government and opposition negotiators are to hold separate preparatory political discussions with international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi on Sunday after humanitarian talks stalled, opposition delegate Ahmad Ramadan said.
Ramadan said the government delegation had yet to respond to opposition about the demands of releasing thousands of prisoners who were taken during almost three years of conflict and of allowing humanitarian aid into the city of Homs.
Syria's opposing parties already discussed aid and prisoner releases on Sunday in talks aimed at building some kind of trust before tough political negotiations, but no progress had been made.
Russia, one of the talks' sponsors, said any agreement on easing the humanitarian crisis created by the Syrian civil war would help to improve the atmosphere at the Geneva talks, but acknowledged that positions were polarised, emotions were on edge and the situation remained extremely grave.
Following their first face-to-face talks on Saturday, government and opposition representatives met again in the presence of mediator Lakhdar Brahimi on Sunday morning.
Opposition sources said Brahimi would hold separate sessions with the two sides in the afternoon, although it was not immediately clear why.
Underlining the immense difficulty of implementing even local agreements on the ground, a U.N. agency trying to deliver aid to a besieged district of Damascus said state checkpoint officials had hampered its work, despite government assurances it would allow the distributions.
In Geneva opposition figures said they presented a list of 47,000 detainees whose release they are seeking, as well as 2,500 women and children whose freedom they say is a priority.
Opposition delegate Monzer Akbik said the government had promised to answer a request for aid to be let into the rebel-held Homs, besieged by President Bashar Assad's forces for 18 months, where the opposition says 500 families urgently need food and medicine.
'The regime said they will have to go back to Damascus to make a final decision on this and they will give an answer later today,' Akbik said. 'This is a stalling technique ... We have noticed lack of seriousness from the regime side.'
However, the two sides disputed even basic facts. Syrian TV cited a government source as saying Damascus was ready to release any civilians 'but the coalition of what is known as the opposition has refrained from presenting a list'.
Homs was one of the early centres of protest against Assad's rule which erupted in 2011 before Syria slid into civil war. Since the start of the crisis more than 130,000 people have been killed, two million have become refugees and around half the country needs aid, the United Nations says.
Voice of Russia, Reuters, RIA
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