SOFIA Feb 16 (TNS): The European Union has called for a swift restart of the stalled United Nations peace talks for Syria, worried by Russia’s efforts to tighten the grip on power of its ally, President Bashar al-Assad.
The UN talks in Geneva have made little progress during seven years of the war, struggling to even bring Assad’s envoys and the Western-backed opposition into one room and reaching deadlock in December.
Moscow has been promoting alternative talks in Astana with Turkey, which also supports rebel groups in Syria’s multi-faceted civil war.
Armed interventions by Russia and Iran have allowed Assad to recapture large parts of Syria but the U.N. says February has seen some of the worst fighting since violence erupted in March 2011.
EU foreign ministers in Bulgaria held their first full discussion about Syria in almost a year on Thursday.
“We discussed how to mobilize humanitarian support but also how to use the convening power of the European Union to support the U.N.-led political process that is facing difficult moments in these weeks,” said EU’s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini.
Mogherini will host an international conference on Syria in Brussels in April to support the ailing peace process and seek more pledges of humanitarian aid. A previous such event in 2017 was overshadowed by a chemical attack in Syria.
France said this week it would strike against Assad if his government carried out new attacks with chemical arms. Several EU ministers told reporters on the sidelines of Thursday’s meeting that the U.N. should deal with such instances.
