Torture committee dismisses Holy See’s argument that its obligation to enforce UN treaty stops at boundaries of city state

The  Vatican  – View from Castel Sant’Angelo

By  :  Jorge Valenzuela A

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Vatican tries to draw line under clerical sex abuse scandals at UN hearing

• John Hooper in Rome
• theguardian.com, Monday 5 May 2014 10.46 EDT

The Vatican has been given another hostile interrogation by a United Nations committee over its record on clerical sex abuse.

One member after another of the committee against torture brushed aside the Holy See’s argument that its obligation to enforce the UN convention against torture stopped at the boundaries of the world’s smallest country, the Vatican City state. They demanded the pope’s representative give answers to a long list of questions about the treatment of sex abuse claims against clergy throughout the world.

The Holy See, which long predates the city state, is a sovereign entity without territory. It is as the Holy See that the Catholic leadership maintains diplomatic relations and signs treaties such as the convention against torture.

But Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s UN ambassador in Geneva, told the committee: “The Holy See intends to focus exclusively on Vatican City state.”

The American expert on the committee, Felice Gaer, made plain her disagreement. She said the Holy See had to “show us that, as a party to the convention, you have a system in place to prohibit torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment when it is acquiesced to by anyone under the effective control of the officials of the Holy See and the institutions that operate in the Vatican City state”.

 

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• Irish Times

Vatican faces tough questions at UN torture committee

Vatican to answer questions on past, present and future handling of clerical sex abuse

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, (R), Apostolic Nuncio, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the Office of the United Nations in Geneva, and Vincenzo Buonomo, (L), of the Secretariat of State of the Holy See prior to the UN torture committee hearing on the Vatican, at the headquarters of the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the Palais Wilson, in Geneva, Switzerland. Photograph: Salvatore Di Nolfi/EPA

Paddy Agnew

• Silvano Tomasi

Tue, May 6, 2014, 01:00

First published: Tue, May 6, 2014, 01:00

As expected, a Holy See delegation faced tough questioning at the UN’s Committee Against Torture in Geneva yesterday. For the second time in three months, the Vatican was appearing before a UN body to answer questions about its ratification of a UN treaty, especially with regard to is past, present and future handling of clerical sex abuse.

In his opening address to the committee, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See’s permanent representative at the UN in Geneva, argued that while the Holy See lent “its moral support and collaboration . . . to the elimination of torture”, it had signed the torture convention in 2002 “on behalf of the Vatican city state”.

No jurisdiction
Archbishop Tomasi said he intended to “focus exclusively on the Vatican city state”, the 100 -acre statelet that surrounds the Basilica of St Peter’s.

In that sense, he claimed, the Holy See had “no jurisdiction over every member of the Catholic Church”. Rather, he said, persons who “live in a particular country are under the jurisdiction of the legitimate authorities of that country and are thus subject to the domestic law [of that country]”.

Inevitably, that assertion prompted a critical reaction from the UN committee, with US human rights activist Felice Gaer accusing Archbishop Tomasi of making an “alleged distinction” between the Holy See and the Vatican city state.

She questioned the Holy See’s apparent assumption that the torture convention applied only to the “four corners of Vatican City”, saying that as far as she could see, Vatican City was simply a “sub-division” of the Holy See.

 

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Physicists discover new type of particle using Large Hadron Collider

 

by Brooks Hays
Syracuse, N.Y. (UPI) Apr 15, 2013

disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only

A new and exotic atomic particle — one that doesn’t mesh with traditional particle physics models — has been discovered by researchers at Syracuse University.

The discovery was made as part of the Large Hadron Collider beauty Collaboration, a multinational research project aimed at finding and studying new quantum forces and particles. Led by researchers from Syracuse, the project is headquartered at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, the biggest particle physics laboratory in the world.

In a new paper, scientists working on the LHCb team claim to have discovered a brand new type of particle.

“We’ve confirmed the unambiguous observation of a very exotic state — something that looks like a particle composed of two quarks and two anti-quarks,” explained Tomasz Skwarnicki, one of the paper’s lead authors and a specialist in experimental high-energy physics. “The discovery certainly doesn’t fit the traditional quark model. It may give us a new way of looking at strong-interaction physics.”

 

Read More Here

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In Ukraine, Pro-Russia Radicals Reject Call To Leave Occupied Buildings. They claim they will comply only if the pro-Western government in Kyiv resigns.

RFE/RL

Four-way talks call for end to Ukraine violence

By Arshad Mohammed and Alexei Anishchuk

The United States, Russia, Ukraine and European Union together called on Thursday for an immediate halt to violence in Ukraine, where Western powers believe Russia is fomenting a pro-Russian separatist movement.

Washington immediately warned Moscow that it would face further sanctions if it did not carry out the agreement, reached in four-party crisis talks in Geneva.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking in Moscow, accused Ukraine’s leaders of committing a “grave crime” by using the army to try to quell unrest in the east of the country, and did not rule out sending in Russian troops.

Putin said he hoped he would not need to take such a step, and that diplomacy could succeed in resolving the standoff, the worst crisis in East-West relations since the Cold War.

The comments came hours after separatists attacked a Ukrainian national guard base overnight and Kiev said three of them were killed in the worst bloodshed yet in a 10-day pro-Russian uprising.

Ukrainian, Russian and Western diplomats held emergency talks seeking to resolve a confrontation that has seen pro-Russian fighters seize official buildings across eastern Ukraine while Moscow masses tens of thousands of troops on the frontier.

“All sides must refrain from any violence, intimidation or provocative actions,” a joint statement issued after the Geneva talks said.

“All illegal armed groups must be disarmed; all illegally seized buildings must be returned to legitimate owners; all illegally occupied streets, squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities and towns must be vacated,” it added.

“It will be a test for Russia, if Russia wants really to show willing to have stability in these regions,” said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsia.

It was unclear if Russia would meet Western demands for it to stop stirring unrest in the east and withdraw its troops from the Ukrainian border. Moscow denies it is active in Ukraine.

SCEPTICISM

There was scepticism over whether the agreement could work.

“Diplomacy cannot succeed if there is no room for compromise,” said Ulrich Speck, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe. “The Kremlin is dedicated to get Ukraine under its control, one way or another. It feels that it has well advanced on that goal, and is not ready to back down. The West simply cannot agree to those conditions.”

US Secretary of States John Kerry said there would be additional sanctions on Russia if it did not act to calm tensions in Ukraine.

“If there is not progress over the course of these next days, and we don’t see a movement in the right direction, then there will be additional sanctions, additional costs as a consequence,” Kerry told reporters.

The United States and European Union have so far imposed visa bans and asset freezes on a small number of Russian individuals, a response that Moscow has openly mocked. However, the Western states say they are now contemplating measures that could hurt Russia’s economy more broadly.

 

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Pro-Russian Insurgents Balk at Terms of Pact in Ukraine

By ANDREW HIGGINS and ANDREW E. KRAMERAPRIL 18, 2014

 

Play Video|0:25

Pro-Russia Militant Rejects Ukraine Pact

The leader of a group of pro-Russia separatists, Denis Pushilin, said he would ignore the diplomatic pact between Russia and Ukraine to de-escalate the crisis.

Credit Sergei Grits/Associated Press

 

KIEV, Ukraine — An American-backed deal to settle the crisis in eastern Ukraine fell flat on Friday as pro-Russian militants vowed to stay in occupied government buildings, dashing hopes of a swift end to an insurgency that the authorities in Kiev portray as a Kremlin-orchestrated effort to put Ukraine’s industrial heartland under Russian control.

But the agreement, reached in Geneva on Thursday by diplomats from the European Union, Russia, Ukraine and the United States, appeared to arrest, at least temporarily, the momentum of separatist unrest in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking east. Armed pro-Russian militants, who have seized buildings in at least 10 towns and cities since Feb. 6, paused their efforts to purge all central government authority from the populous Donetsk region.

 

It was clear all along that for the pact to have a chance of success, the Kremlin would have to pressure the militants to leave the buildings they had seized. So far, it has shown no inclination to do so, blaming the Ukrainian government for the turmoil and denying that Russia has any ties to the rebels.

With militants vowing to ignore the agreement but halting what had been a daily expansion of territory under their control, officials in Kiev, the capital, voiced some hope that a settlement was still possible. They were skeptical, however, about Russia’s willingness to push the separatists to disarm and vacate occupied buildings.

“If Russia is responsible before not just Ukraine but the world community, it should prove it,” said Andrii Deshchytsia, the acting Ukrainian foreign minister, who took part in the Geneva talks.

Western officials said the United States planned to reassure Eastern European members of NATO by conducting company-size — about 150 soldiers — ground force exercises in Estonia and Poland. The exercises would last a couple of weeks and would most likely be followed by other troop rotations in the region.

In a sign of the chasm separating Russian and Ukrainian views, Russia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Friday that made no mention of the pro-Russian militants driving the unrest. It said the call for militants to disarm “meant in the first place” the disarming of Ukrainian nationalist groups hostile to Russia, like Right Sector “and other pro-fascist groups which took part in the February coup in Kiev.”

The state-run Russian television channel, Rossiya, reporting from an occupied building in Horlivka in the Donetsk region, featured a masked gunman who pledged to “fight to the end for his convictions.” He displayed an armband emblazoned with a swastika-like symbol, which he said had been seized from supporters of the Ukrainian government.

Doubts about the Kremlin’s readiness to push pro-Russian militants to surrender their guns have been strengthened by its insistence that it has no hand in or control over the separatist unrest, which Washington and Kiev believe is the result of a covert Russian operation involving, in some places, the direct action of special forces.

“I don’t know Russia’s intentions,” Mr. Deshchytsia said, noting that during the negotiations, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, had repeatedly asserted “that Russia was not involved.” He said Mr. Lavrov had been “cooperative and aggressive at the same time.”

 Russia’s denials have stirred concerns that it went along with the agreement not to curb the turmoil in eastern Ukraine, but to blunt American and European calls for tougher sanctions that could severely damage Russia’s already sickly economy. Western sanctions have so far been limited to a travel ban and asset freeze on a few dozen individuals and a Russian bank.

Secretary of State John Kerry called Mr. Lavrov on Friday and urged Russia to ensure “full and immediate compliance” with the agreement, a senior State Department official said. Mr. Kerry, the official added, “made clear that the next few days would be a pivotal period for all sides to implement the statement’s provisions, particularly that all illegal armed groups must be disarmed and all illegally seized buildings must be returned to legitimate owners.”

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In Ukraine, Pro-Russia Radicals Reject Call To Leave Occupied Buildings

By RFE/RL

April 18, 2014

Pro-Russia radicals occupying official buildings in eastern Ukraine say they will only leave if the pro-Western government in Kyiv resigns.

Denis Pushilin, the self-declared leader of the radicals in Donetsk, told reporters on April 18 that he did not consider his men bound by a compromise agreement between Russia and Ukraine to disarm and vacate occupied buildings.

The agreement was reached at four-party talks on April 17 in Geneva also involving the United States and the European Union.

Pushilin said the government in Kyiv was illegitimate and also must vacate public buildings that he said it was occupying illegally.

Local media reports on April 18 said none of the government buildings seized across eastern Ukraine had yet been vacated.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told parliament on April 18 that the government had drafted a law that would offer an amnesty to insurgents who would lay down their arms and leave the occupied buildings.

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US criticised by UN for human rights failings on NSA, guns and drones

Geneva panel share deep concerns over US record on host of different subjects, including racial inequality and Guantánamo

• Ed Pilkington in New York
• theguardian.com, Thursday 13 March 2014 16.20 EDT

Guántanamo Bay. The head of the US delegation to Geneva said the country was ‘continually striving to improve’. Photograph: Brennan Linsley/AP

The US came under sharp criticism at the UN human rights committee in Geneva on Thursday for a long list of human rights abuses that included everything from detention without charge at Guantánamo, drone strikes and NSA surveillance, to the death penalty, rampant gun violence and endemic racial inequality.

At the start of a two-day grilling of the US delegation, the committee’s 18 experts made clear their deep concerns about the US record across a raft of human rights issues. Many related to faultlines as old as America itself, such as guns and race.

Other issues were relative newcomers. The experts raised questions about the National Security Agency’s surveillance of digital communications in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations. It also intervened in this week’s dispute between the CIA and US senators by calling for declassification and release of the 6,300-page report into the Bush administration’s use of torture techniques and rendition that lay behind the current CIA-Senate dispute.

The committee is charged with upholding the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a UN treaty that the US ratified in 1992. The current exercise, repeated every five years, is a purely voluntarily review, and the US will face no penalties should it choose to ignore the committee’s recommendations, which will appear in a final report in a few weeks’ time.

But the US is clearly sensitive to suggestions that it fails to live up to the human rights obligations enshrined in the convention – as signalled by the large size of its delegation to Geneva this week. And as an act of public shaming, Thursday’s encounter was frequently uncomfortable for the US.

The US came under sustained criticism for its global counter-terrorism tactics, including the use of unmanned drones to kill al-Qaida suspects, and its transfer of detainees to third countries that might practice torture, such as Algeria. Committee members also highlighted the Obama administration’s failure to prosecute any of the officials responsible for permitting waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation” techniques under the previous administration.

Walter Kälin, a Swiss international human rights lawyer who sits on the committee, attacked the US government’s refusal to recognise the convention’s mandate over its actions beyond its own borders. The US has asserted since 1995 that the ICCPR does not apply to US actions beyond its borders – and has used that “extra-territoriality” claim to justify its actions in Guantánamo and in conflict zones.

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US responds to Guantánamo Bay and NSA criticisms made by UN committee

• Geneva delegation defends US record
• UN human rights body checks ICCPR commitments

• Ed Pilkington in New York
• theguardian.com, Friday 14 March 2014 14.16 EDT

Answering UN criticisms of detentions at Guantánamo Bay, the US delegation said: ‘It is the policy of the US to support the preservation of life in a humane manner.’ Photo: John Moore/Getty Images

The US has put up its defence at the United Nations in Geneva over charges that it is guilty of widespread human rights violations, claiming that the military commissions at Guantanámo Bay meet – and exceed – fair trial standards and that agencies engaging in mass surveillance are subject to “rigorous oversight”.

The US delegation delivered its rebuttal on Friday to the strong criticism it has faced from members of the UN human rights committee. Over two days, the committee has pressed hard questions about the US human rights record, from National Security Agency data mining to racial discrimination and rampant gun violence.

The interaction between the US and the committee is part of a process, completed every five years, to review whether the country is meeting its commitments under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which the US ratified in 1992. At the end of the process, the committee will produce a non-binding final report that is aimed at encouraging the US at all levels of government to improve its policies in areas of perceived weakness.

US officials sought to fend off the committee’s criticisms, focusing particularly on Guantánamo and the mass dragnet of data exposed by Edward Snowden. The delegation insisted that the 154 detainees still being held in Guantánamo are there “lawfully both under international law and US law”.

Officials disputed that any of the detainees had been “cleared for release”. Rather, they were subject to review board assessments every six months to see whether “continued lawful detention is necessary to protect against a continuing threat against the US”.

Just three days after the first Guantánamo detainee lodged the first legal challenge to force feeding at the base in a US federal court, alleging he had been subjected to a form of torture known as the “water cure”, the US delegation in Geneva claimed detainees had “access to exceptional healthcare” and said: “It is the policy of the US to support the preservation of life in a humane manner.”

Read More Here

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Damascus confirms it will attend next round of peace talks

by Staff Writers
Damascus (AFP) Feb 07, 2014

Syria’s deputy foreign minister, Faisal Muqdad, said on Friday that Damascus will take part in a second round of peace talks in Geneva due to start on February 10.

“It has been decided that the delegation of the Syrian republic will take part in the second round of negotiations in Geneva,” state news agency SANA quoted Muqdad as saying.

“The Syrian delegation wishes to pursue the efforts it deployed during the first round in Geneva, and insists that the discussions focus on all clauses in the Geneva I communique, beginning with the first clause,” he said.

Ten days of talks in Switzerland last month between government and opposition delegations yielded no tangible results, and Damascus had said it was unsure whether it would return to the negotiating table.

Despite persistent pressure from UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, and cosponsors Russia and the United States, the two sides failed to agree on a single point.

Read More Here

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“The US has proposed to include five participants into a parallel track: Russia, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran,” the report says

US suggests engaging Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran in Syria talks – newspaper

Photo: EPA

During the Munich meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry, the American side suggested creating an additional mechanism to promote the Syrian settlement, the Moscow-based Kommersant newspaper writes in its Tuesday edition.

The newspaper quotes a Russian diplomatic source as saying that the case in point is a regional format that should expand the number of participants in the Geneva-2 peace conference on Syria.

“The Americans have proposed to include five participants into a parallel track: Russia, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran,” the report says.

Russia and the US play a leading role in the Syrian settlement. Saudi Arabia and Turkey are the main sponsors of opponents of the regime, while Iran is its key ally.

“The Russian side has on the whole welcomed the proposal. Last year, Moscow itself initiated a regional negotiation format in addition to inter-Syrian dialogue, but back then the United States deemed it inexpedient. Now the US side has come up with the same idea,” Kommersant reports.

The newspaper links a change in Washington’s position to the results of the first round of Geneva-2.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described those results as “modest but encouraging.”

Moscow has hailed as positive the fact that the Syrian conflicting parties sat down at the negotiating table within the Geneva-2 framework and that none has “slammed the door” so far.

UN and Arab League special envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi sounded more pessimistic. “Unfortunately, we have achieved nothing,” Brahimi told reporters in Munic. He voiced hope that the next round of Geneva-2, scheduled for February 10, would take place in a more constructive atmosphere.

Washington apparently doubts that, hence its latest offer.

So far, it’s not very clear whether it’s about a parallel conference involving regional players or a kind of permanent communication channel between them.

A Kommersant diplomatic source in a leading European country has described the US proposal as “useful.”

“Any means that can stop the bloodshed should be used,” the source said. He believes that the European Union – “Syria’s key humanitarian aid donor” – should also have a part in the future regional talks.

“It would be wrong to underestimate the positive role the Europeans could play in that process,” the diplomat said.

However, considering how hard convening Geneva-2 proved to be, organizing regional talks may also be a challenge.

Voice of Russia, Interfax

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US spy chiefs say number of foreign militants in Syria rises ….. Meanwhile, US arms keep flowing into Syria. Hmmmmm…..

NBC World News

US spy chiefs say number of foreign militants in Syria rises

Militant Website / AP

This undated image posted on a militant website on Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2014, shows fighters from the al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) marching in Raqqa, Syria.

By Patricia Zengerle and Mark Hosenball, Reuters

More than 7,000 foreign militants are fighting for the rebels in Syria’s civil war and some are being trained to return home and conduct attacks, U.S. spy chiefs told lawmakers on Wednesday.

The estimate, given at a Senate intelligence hearing, was much higher than earlier figures of 3,000 to 4,000 foreign fighters in Syria, and came after news emerged this week that Congress had secretly approved more funding to send weapons to “moderate” rebels.

“We estimate, at this point, an excess of 7,000 foreign fighters have been attracted from some 50 countries, many of them in Europe and the Mideast,” James Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence, told the hearing.

“And this is of great concern not only to us, but to those countries,” he said at the Senate Intelligence Committee’s annual hearing on global security threats.

U.S. spy agencies had not previously made the figure of 7,000 public, though it has appeared in classified intelligence reports, a U.S. official said.

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US arms flow hinders Geneva II talks on Syria: Analyst

The ongoing Geneva II talks on the crisis in Syria will fail to yield “concrete” results as long as the United States continues to support the militancy in the Arab state, an analyst tells Press TV.

In a Thursday interview with Press TV, William Jones, with the Executive Intelligence Review, described Washington’s decision to send more arms to the militants in Syria as a “contradictory policy.”

According to Jones, the ongoing Geneva II conference, aimed at containing the crisis in Syria, will not “lead to anything concrete as long as there’s a policy of supporting the violence in the region.”

“They (Americans) are feeding in more guns and ammunition. The violence will increase and it’s hard to see how [Geneva II] negotiations under those circumstances can lead to a lasting peace,” added the analyst.

Jones made the statements after Reuters reported earlier this week that lawmakers in the US Congress had secretly approved the provision of US arms to the Takfiri militants fighting against the Syrian government.

Reports also say the US increased more than twice its supply of light weaponry and munitions to the militants linked to the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA)’s Supreme Military Command in the month of January. The military command is aligned with the Western-backed opposition Syrian National Coalition (SNC).

The Geneva II meeting, which opened in Switzerland on January 22, has already hit a deadlock amid sharp differences between the Syrian government and the foreign-backed opposition.

On Wednesday, UN-Arab League Special Representative for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi said there is a “quite large” gap between the rival sides in the Geneva II meeting. He has also said that the ongoing talks have not produced much.

MKA/HJL

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Syria Government Says Women, Children Can Leave Homs. Mediator presses for deal to allow aid into Homs

Syria Government Says Women, Children Can Leave Homs

Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi gives a short press briefing upon his arrival to the UN headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, Jan. 26, 2014, as Syria’s government and opposition met for UN-mediated talks.

 

VOA News

January 26, 2014

U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi says Syrian government delegates, at peace talks in Geneva, have agreed to allow women and children to immediately leave a besieged district in the central city of Homs.

Homs is one of Syria’s largest cities and has been pounded by government assaults to reclaim control from rebel forces.

The breakthrough followed two rounds of talks Sunday between the U.N. mediator and representatives of Syria’s government and the opposition.

The early talks in Geneva, Switzerland, focused on the release of thousands of prisoners, including women, children and the elderly, from Syrian prisons.

Brahimi told a press conference later Sunday the opposition has agreed to a government request for a list of detainees held by armed rebel groups.

Brahimi said he will meet the two sides jointly on Monday. The idea of forming a transitional governing body might come up then.

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• BBC
  

Syria talks: Civilians to be allowed out of Homs old city

The old city of Homs has been under siege by government forces

Syria will allow women and children to leave the besieged area of Homs “from now”, the UN mediator at the Geneva peace talks has told reporters.

Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said women and children were free to leave. He said armed groups were preventing them from leaving.

Mr Brahimi said that the opposition had agreed to give the government lists of detainees held by armed groups.

He said it was “too early” to assess the prospects of a comprehensive deal.

Mr Brahimi said he hoped a humanitarian convoy from the UN and the Red Cross would be able to go to Homs on Monday.

Mr Mekdad said he hoped arrangements could be made with local officials to allow the convoy access but that the aid must not fall into “the hands of terrorists”, the term Syrian officials for all armed opposition.

Lakhdar Brahimi said that the government would allow women and children to leave immediately but had asked for a list of adult male civilians who wanted to leave to ensure they were not fighters.

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…..

Syria talks mediator presses for deal to allow aid into Homs

Government and opposition negotiators struggling to agree on local ceasefire sought by Lakhdar Brahimi at Geneva talks

• Ian Black in Geneva
• theguardian.com, Sunday 26 January 2014 10.43 EST

Lakhdar Brahimi is representing the UN and Arab League at the Syria talks in Geneva. Photograph: Salvatore Di Nolfi/EPA

Syrian government and opposition negotiators are struggling to agree on a local ceasefire to allow humanitarian relief supplies into Homs, on the second day of UN-mediated talks about confidence-building measures.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the Algerian diplomat representing the UN and Arab League, is trying to nail down an agreement allowing aid through to a rebel-held area of the central Syrian town. But government officials said the talks in Geneva did not need to deal with the issue, underlying their unhappiness with the conference, which is seeking to end a war that has claimed 130,000 lives and made two million people refugees.

Brahimi said on Saturday that the negotiations had got off to a “good beginning”, but said the two sides were speaking only through him and not directly to each other.

In Sunday’s first session the format was the same. In the afternoon the teams convened in separate rooms at the UN HQ, with the veteran mediator shuttling between them.

In the morning, opposition delegates placed on an empty chair a photograph of Abdel-Aziz al-Khayr, of the moderate Damascus-based National Co-ordination Bureau, who was detained in 2012, probably by the regime. The point was to demonstrate how Bashar al-Assad’s repression targeted even his mildest critics.

Munzer Aqbiq, spokesman for the western-backed Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC), accused Assad of stalling on the Homs aid convoy. Buthaina Shaaban, the president’s media adviser, said the matter was being dealt with in Damascus. Western diplomats said the official Syrian delegation had denied knowing about the relief plan – which was drawn up with input from the US and Russia, as well as the UN and Red Cross – when it was raised.

Read More Here

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Syria foes ‘to meet face-to-face’ at Geneva II talks

• BBC News

UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi: “The huge ambition of this project is to save Syria, no less than that”

Syria’s opposition and government will meet “in the same room” in Geneva on Saturday after the first day of a peace conference ended with no direct talks.

UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who held talks with both sides on Friday, said they all understood that the conference was trying to “save Syria”.

The two sides have blamed each other for a lack of progress.

Diplomats say they are now aiming at small concessions such as local truces rather than an overall peace deal.

An unnamed source at the talks told Reuters news agency that the two sides had agreed to spend the next 48 hours discussing humanitarian access to the besieged city of Homs.

Lakhdar Brahimi’s announcement that the two sides will, after all, meet face-to-face is the first genuinely positive moment since these talks began on Wednesday.

Just a few hours earlier it looked as if Geneva II would end as it started, amid rancour and accusations. The Syrian government threatened to leave, and the opposition continued to insist it did not even want to see government representatives unless they agreed that President Assad had no place in a future transitional government.

Somehow, in separate talks, Mr Brahimi managed to persuade them to stay. The first face-to-face meeting is now scheduled for Saturday morning. If it goes well, there may be further meetings in the afternoon.

Exactly what will be discussed remains unclear: if the two sides focus on better access for aid agencies, or even some temporary local ceasefires, then progress may be made. If they continue to make President Assad’s future their starting point, they may get nowhere. As Mr Brahimi said, no-one expected these talks to be easy.

“The practical aspects have been worked on, things are ready and if the government doesn’t put a block on it then it could happen quickly,” said the source.

Supporters of President Bashar al-Assad have surrounded rebels in Homs, besieging the central areas of the city for more than a year.

‘Encouraging discussions’

The delegates are reportedly still not prepared to talk to each other directly, but are expected to communicate via Mr Brahimi.

“Tomorrow everybody will be in the same room but everybody will address Mr Lakhdar Brahimi,” Louay Safi, a spokesman for the opposition Syrian National Coalition, told reporters late on Friday.

Preliminary talks began on Wednesday in Montreux, and Mr Brahimi spent Thursday and Friday attempting to persuade both sides to agree to meet face-to-face.

Friday was supposed to be the first day of official talks, but neither side would meet the other.

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Syria’s foreign minister threatens to walk out of peace talks

Walid Muallem says he will leave Geneva unless ‘serious’ talks begin by Saturday, as UN mediator meets both sides separately

• Ian Black in Geneva and agencies
• theguardian.com, Friday 24 January 2014 06.58 EST

Syria’s foreign minister and head of the government negotiating team, Walid Muallem (centre), arrives at the UN in Geneva to meet mediator Lakhdar Brahimi. Photograph: Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images

Long-awaited direct peace talks between the Syrian government and rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad failed to get under way as expected on Friday morning after Damascus insisted on ending “terrorism” before seeking a political solution to end nearly three years of war and misery.

The UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi was meeting both sides separately in Geneva for the second consecutive day to iron out procedural and agenda issues before a first round of negotiations at the Palais des Nations.

But Walid Muallem, Syria‘s foreign minister and head of its delegation, raised the stakes by warning that he would return to Damascus unless serious talks began by Saturday, Syrian state TV reported.

Face-to-face talks were due to follow on from where Wednesday’s 40-nation international conference in nearby Montreux left off. It would be the first direct contact between the opposing parties since the anti-Assad uprising began in March 2011. An estimated 130,000 people have been killed since then, 2 million Syrians have fled abroad and a total of 9 million are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

Angry remarks in Montreux by Muallem left the western-backed Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) claiming that it alone was committed to the 2012 agreement – known as Geneva I – to create a “transitional governing body”. Assad, president since succeeding his father in 2000, has insisted repeatedly that he will not step down. The opposition says he must go. Brahimi’s problem is how to square that circle.

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UN Withdraws Its Invitation for Iran to Join Syria Peace Talks

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Nightly News   |  January 20, 2014

Sanctions and Syria: Iran’s step forward — and back

While Iran was rewarded for limiting its nuclear enrichment program, the country’s invitation to partake in UN-led Syria peace talks was revoked.

Video Transcript

>>> the federal government said something today about iran that we don’t hear very often. they said that iran has taken, quote, concrete actions that represent an important step forward. this came after iran moved to scale back its nuclear program , and the u.s. and europe started to lift some sanctions as part of that interim agreement . we get the story tonight from nbc’s andrea mitchell .

>> reporter: the seal of approval came from u.n. weapons inspectors today. disconnecting the centrifuges producing iran ‘s high-grade 20% enriched uranium . fuel that can easily be upgraded to power a nuclear weapon .

>> everything going as planned. the 20% enrichment has been stopped.

>> reporter: iran has complied by limiting its uranium enrichment to lower levels, granting full access to u.n. inspectors diluting current uranium stockpiles. halting construction on a separate plutonium plant. within hours, europe and washington lifted some of the sanctions that have cripple iran ‘s economy, permitting some oil exports, imports of auto and airplane parts, and trade in gold and other precious metals .

>> the suspension of these sanctions will enter into force today.

>> reporter: as expected, israel’s prime minister, netanyahu, said today, iran ‘s entire program should be shut down. and now comes the hard part, a final agreement requiring iran to disclose all its nuclear secrets.

>> it’s going to have to answer basic questions about did iran work on nuclear weapons in the past, and do some of those efforts continue.

>> reporter: today’s breakthrough came 33 years to the today after the american diplomats were freed. now iran ‘s new president rouhani offers hope of a new beginning, unless rouhani is blocked by hard liners.

>> a major open question is whether president rouhani can actually implement any deal inside iran .

>> reporter: or unless the deal is blocked by its many critics in congress. what iran is cooperating on the nuclear issue, it is still arming president assad. so after intense pressure from the u.s., tonight the u.n. has withdrawn its invitation to iran to take part in peace talks this week on syria. the first talk since the war started more than two years ago. brian?

>> andrea mitchell in our d.c. newsroom tonight, thanks.

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• The Telegraph

United Nations withdraws Iran invitation to save Syria peace talks

Iran was stopped from attending long-awaited Syrian peace talks last night after an extraordinary last-minute invitation almost led to the breakdown of the whole process.

By Richard Spencer in Geneva

11:50PM GMT 20 Jan 2014

The United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, had shocked the United States, its western allies and the Syrian opposition by announcing that Iran would attend the talks, starting on Wednesday.

Iran is the Syrian regime’s most important sponsor, and the move was also welcomed by Russia, which said Iran’s absence would be an “unforgivable mistake”.

But the opposition Syrian National Coalition, which had only reluctantly agreed to its western backers’ demands it attend after a vote on Saturday, immediately said it would pull out.

It gave Mr Ban until last night to withdraw the offer if Iran did not immediately promise to withdraw its forces from Syria and agree to the formation of a transitional government, as agreed in a previous round of talks in Geneva in June 2012.

When Iran refused to do so, Mr Ban was forced to backtrack. “He continues to urge Iran to join the global consensus behind the Geneva communique,” his spokesman said. “Given that it has chosen to remain outside that basic understanding, he has decided that the one-day Montreux gathering will proceed without Iran’s participation.”

The Montreux part of the talks will be attended by a Syrian delegation led by the Assad regime’s foreign minister and the Coalition representing the rebels, as well as ministers from an array of states supporting either side in the conflict, including Russia, the United States and Britain.

Talks will then resume in Geneva on Friday, with direct negotiations taking place between the two Syrian sides conducted in closed-door session by the UN envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi.

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Syria talks: Iran and Russia angry over invitation withdrawal

Tehran says UN’s rescinding of invite is deplorable while Moscow says Iran’s absence could jeopardise peace talks

• Shaun Walker in Moscow, Matthew Weaver and Saeed Kamali Dehghan
• theguardian.com, Tuesday 21 January 2014 07.17 EST

Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said the UN’s withdrawal of Iran’s invitation to Syrian peace talks was a mistake, but not a catastrophe. Photograph: Maxim Shipenkov/EPA

Bashar al-Assad’s key international allies in Moscow and Tehran have reacted angrily to the UN’s decision to rescind Iran‘s invitation to this week’s peace talks on the crisis in Syria.

The UN hastily withdrew its surprise invitation after pressure from the US and a threat that the Syrian opposition would boycott the talks.

The build-up to the talks, which are due to start in the Swiss town of Montreux on Wednesday, is being overshadowed by Iran’s non-attendance, and new evidence showing the Syrian government has been involved in the systematic killing of thousands of political detainees.

Iran, which is accused of providing military and financial backing to the Assad government, said the decision to withdraw its invitation was deplorable.

Russia‘s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who helped broker the talks with his US counterpart, John Kerry, said the UN move was a mistake. While it was not a catastrophe, it made the slim prospect of an agreement less likely, he said.

Speaking at his annual press conference in Moscow, Lavrov said Iran’s presence at the event would have given it more chance of succeeding.

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, speaking to reporters in Turkmenistan’s capital, Ashgabat, said it was regrettable that the UN general secretary had rescinded the invitation and that Tehran had only accepted it reluctantly in the first place.

“Unfortunately, Ban Ki-moon came under pressure after extending an invitation to Iran,” Zarif said, according to the semi-official Isna news agency. “We were not eager to participate in the first place and had only decided to attend because we were invited.”

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