U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura will hold talks July 26 with top U.S. and Russian officials in Geneva in a bid to revive flagging peace talks, his office said.
U.S.
mission spokesman Paul Patin told AFP that the U.S. State Department’s
special envoy for Syria Michael Ratney will be at the meeting, while
Russia’s Ria-Novosti news agency said Moscow will be represented by
Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov.
De Mistura’s spokeswoman
Jessy Chahine, who confirmed the meeting, gave no details about its
agenda, but the U.N. envoy has been trying to save a peace process which
some feared was facing total collapse.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian
counterpart Sergei Lavrov earlier this month announced an agreement on
“concrete steps” to salvage a failing cease-fire in Syria, a key step
before negotiations can resume.
Kerry and Lavrov were also due to meet on the sidelines of an Asian summit in Vientiane, Laos on July 26.
When
peace talks to end the five-year war restarted in February, de Mistura
voiced hope that he could strike a deal for a new transitional
government in Syria by Aug. 1.
While that deadline will
certainly not be met, the U.N. envoy has repeatedly stressed that there
is no “Plan B” for Syria aside from the peace process, urging Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad’s government and opposition leaders to stick
with the negotiations.
Meanwhile, U.S.-backed fighters in
northern Syria have renewed an offer to the Islamic State of Iraq and
the Levant (ISIL) militants in the besieged northern town of Manbij,
saying the extremists can leave it and would not be attacked, the
Associated Press reported.
The Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) said the offer is meant to protect civilians in the town.
The Arab-Kurdish force has been on the offensive in Manbij, backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.
The
July 25 offer by the SDF-linked Manbij Military Council comes days
after the extremists ignored an earlier, 48-hour offer to leave the town
just with their “individual weapons.”
It said that if ISIL
allowed all civilians to leave, SDF would in return allow wounded ISIL
militants safe passage to other areas nearby under their control.
The council urged ISIL to send a delegation from Manbij to discuss the matter.
Strikes continued to hit different places in Syria.
Rockets
rained down on several Old Damascus neighborhoods on July 24, including
one known for its cafes and restaurants, killing at least eight people
and wounding 20 others.
“At least eight people were killed and
more than 20 others were wounded when rockets hits several neighborhoods
in Old Damascus,” he Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP, adding that the rockets were fired from
rebel positions on the outskirts of the capital.
Syria’s state
news agency SANA, quoting a police source, denounced a “terrorist
attack” that it said killed five people and wounded 16.
Air
strikes and barrel bomb attacks killed 16 civilians in rebel-held parts
of Aleppo province on July 25, with rebel rocket fire onto government
areas killing three more, the Observatory said.
The group said the strikes in the early hours of July 25 were believed to have been carried out by Russian warplanes, and hit several locations including a market area.
