GENEVA-
International mediator Lakhdar Brahimi apologized to the Syrian people for the lack of progress at peace talks in Geneva after their second round ended on Saturday with little more than an agreement to meet again.
As it became clear that the talks had not even broached the subject of a change of leadership in Syria, both France and Britain, who back the opposition, blamed President Bashar al-Assad for the impasse.
Underlining the gaping rift that remains between the sides, anti-government negotiators and a diplomat said Syria’s government had added opposition delegates to a “terrorist list” and had seized their assets.
“I am very, very sorry and I apologize to the Syrian people … their hopes … were very, very high here, that something will happen here,” Brahimi told journalists.
An early agreement to evacuate people from the besieged city of Homs had raised false expectations the talks would make greater progress, said Brahimi.
Saturday’s last session of the second round of the talks was “as laborious as all the meetings we have had, but we agreed on an agenda for the next round when it does take place”, Brahimi added.
He said the points to be discussed at the next Geneva round included violence and terrorism, a transitional governing body, national institutions and national reconciliation.
However, he added, the Syrian government first wanted to deal with the issue of combating “terrorism” – the word it uses to describe armed opposition to Assad’s rule – and had refused to deal with any other points until that was resolved.
The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) also stressed how meager the results had been, saying the Homs evacuation had not heralded any wider improvement in humanitarian access to civil war zones where the United Nations says up to 3 million people are beyond its reach.
The three-year-old Syrian revolt against President Assad began as peaceful street protests but transformed into an armed insurgency after a fierce security force crackdown.
Fighting has killed more than 140,000 people – more than 7,000 of them children – according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and is destabilizing the country’s neighbors.
The pro-opposition Observatory, a British-based monitoring group, said around 6,000 Syrians have been killed since the latest talks started last month, the fastest death rate recorded since the country slid into conflict in 2011.
