Geneva, 17 March 2016
Staffan de Mistura (SdeM): Good evening. Well, it is a good thing to recap. We had todaythree events, and you must have had already one debriefing on that. We had theHumanitarian Task Force. Jan Egeland debriefed you on that. And the perceptionwe have is that the progress this time is being slow, let’s be frank. But whenwe were actually having the meeting there was the news that the convoys weremoving towards 50,000 new beneficiaries. But we are eager to see anincremental improvement of reaching people every day of every week.
The issue of Daraya has not yet been solved. We’reworking hard on it. We’re using also the contact with the Russian military andwith the Government in order to make surethat no one has any doubt that we will not give up on that Daraya needs to bereached among places… And the same applies to medical supplies, which isstill a sorrow point, which isunacceptable and therefore needs to be addressed. Plans are (proceeding) for alarger arrivals of convoys, as Jan Egeland must have referred to you. The mainmessage is: there is no excuse, no excuse for not progressing with humanitarianaid now that the ceasefire, the cessation of hostilities is actually movingstill forward and has been taking placefor a while.
The issue of detainees as I promised was raised byme both with the Government, very firmly and clearly, and with the task forceon humanitarian issues and the two co-chairs. We will raise it every time wehave a task force; the issue needs to be addressed and it’s not only detaineesbut there’s also the abducted people and if you remember they were and they’vebeen shown in Eastern Ghouta, you remember in those cages. So, we are lookingat both cases, but the numbers of the detainees and the abducted are obviouslyenormously different, but they are reflecting the suffering of Syrian families.
Regarding the Task Force on ceasefire or cessationof hostilities. We have been noticing today that during the last three dayshave been surprisingly calm according to the reporters and everyone, includingthose who have access to additional information. There have been a fewincidents, and there have at least been three people killed sadly – and onelife lost is too many, but when youcompare to what it used to be in particular in the last three days, this hasbeen noticeable in the Task Torce.
This is not yet a trend, let’s be frank. So weremain, and need to remain, vigilant because things can change very quickly.But again, when there are improvements on security we need to capitalize from ahumanitarian point of view, so themessage is: this is the time to accelerate instead of reducing the accelerationof humanitarian aid. The Russian Federation’s representatives after the TaskForce on the ceasefire explained the reasons for their own withdrawal and thefact that it took place not by coincidence the very day of the beginning of theTalks. I leave it to the Russian Federation to elaborate on that and notparaphrasing what they said. And you will have the opportunity, I’m sure, sincethey did so in a public meeting or at least in a large meeting.
The next Task Torces will take place on Wednesdaybecause we want to dedicate next Thursday to wrapping up this phase of theIntra-Syrian Talks, and then we get to the Intra-Syrian Talks; today, thisevening, we had an intense, in my opinion very productive, meeting with theHNC. They will come and follow me for their own comments. It was verysubstantive, papers on the political transition were actually distributed andthey went very deeply into how they see the political transition beingpotentially implemented soon. We are going to study them very carefully, and add questions when needed inorder to be able to share them with the other side. Certainly we want tobetter understand how all this can fit in to what could be a negotiatingposition, but we were impressed about the depth of the preparation they had. Tomorrow we will be meeting both Government and the HNC, and I will tellyou more when the day is over.