French foreign minister calls for taskforce to evaluate alleged breaches of agreement, while UN begins deliveries of aid to besieged towns
The Syrian ceasefire is facing its first serious test after France called for a meeting of the body tasked with monitoring it in the wake of allegations of serious breaches of its terms by Syrian and Russian forces on Sunday.
The ceasefire came into force on Friday night and was widely thought to have held on the first day, but the Syrian high negotiating council, which represents rebel factions, said breaches had nullified the process.
The taskforce will meet in Geneva at the request of the French to examine whether the alleged breaches were deliberate, the product of competing misinterpretations of the ceasefire, or military error.
“We have received indications that attacks, including by air, have been continuing against zones controlled by the moderate opposition,” French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said.
“All this needs to be verified. France has therefore demanded that the taskforce charged with overseeing the cessation of hostilities meet without delay.”
A spokesman for the Saudi-backed opposition HNC said the cessation of hostilities was broken by Syria’s government 15 times within the first day, and that there were further violations by Russia and Hezbollah, both allies of president Bashar al-Assad.
The countries belonging to the International Syria Support Group, led by the United States and Russia, are supposed to monitor compliance with the deal and act rapidly to investigate any breaches, using force only as a last resort. The Americans and the Russians have separate ceasefire monitoring operations and arguably different interpretations of the territories that are subject to the ceasefire.
All sides have agreed that fighting against Islamic State and the al-Nusra Front – deemed to be a Syrian franchise of al-Qaida – are excluded from the ceasefire. Some Syrian rebels supported by the west fight alongside al-Nusra.
HNC spokesman Salim al-Muslat said it was still unclear how the system was supposed to function.
Asaad al-Zoubi, another HNC official, said the cessation of hostilities had collapsed before it started and it faced “complete nullification”, Al Arabiya al Hadath TV reported.
“We need to get an explanation from the Russians on the strikes that took place on Sunday,” said one western diplomat.
In a bid to calm the atmosphere, United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said on Monday that the cessation was largely holding but that major and regional powers were looking into some incidents that he hoped would be contained.
The UN’s Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, is hoping to reconvene peace talks in Geneva next Monday, but the progress of the ceasefire will determine whether even proximity talks get underway.
In a sign of how the talks might develop it was suggested Syria could become a federal state if that model works in the country. The suggestion was made by Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov at a news briefing as a way of resolving arguments about whether Assad would remain in power. Ryabkov also warned there were signs that Turkey, on the northern border of Syria, was still preparing attacks.
An official with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent said dozens of trucks carrying aid have started entering a besieged rebel-held suburb of the Syrian capital, Damascus, for the first time since the truce went into effect. The UN wants to deliver food, medicine and other supplies to more than 150,000 people under siege in Syria over the next five days.
The office of the UN human rights chief said thousands of people risk starving to death in towns and villages that are inaccessible to humanitarian aid groups.
Pending approval from parties to the conflict, the UN said it was ready to deliver aid to an estimated 1.7 million people in hard-to-reach areas in the first three months of this year through UN inter-agency convoys. It called on all parties to ensure unconditional, unimpeded and sustained access to 4.6 million people in hard-to-reach or besieged locations across Syria as well an immediate lifting of all sieges of towns where about 500,000 people are trapped.
“The deliberate starvation of people is unequivocally forbidden as a weapon of warfare. By extension, so are sieges, which deprive civilians of essential goods such as food,” said Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN human rights chief, in an address to the human rights council in Geneva.
During his address, al-Hussein said “thousands of people may have starved to death”, but his office issued a statement shortly afterwards indicating that he meant to say “thousands risk starving to death”.
Source : http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/29/thousands-may-have-died-in-syria-sieges-un-human-rights-chief-says
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