FM takes part in Friends of Syria group meeting

Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem took part in the Friends of Syria group meeting held on Friday in New York, on the sidelines of the United Nations 67th General Assembly, according to a Foreign Ministry communiqué released on Sunday. The Friends of Syria group supports the opponents of Bachar Al-Assad's regime and is made up of 70 countries, including Arab countries, European Union countries, U.S. and Turkey. The group's first meeting was organised last February 24 in Tunis. The New York meeting was chaired by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with attendance of the group member countries' foreign ministers, Arab League Secretary-General Nabil El-Arabi and UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman. In his address, Mr. Rafik Abdessalem called on the international community "to provide support" to the United Nations special emissary to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi and "guarantee the conditions of success to help all stakeholders in the Syrian crisis reach a settlement that suits the Syrian people and meets their expectancies," the communiqué reads. He exhorted the international community to "support the humanitarian efforts to alleviate the Syrian people's suffering and back up the action of Syria's neighbour countries regarding refugees." Mr. Abdessalem reminded of Tunisia's initiative to set up a camp for the Syrian refugees in Jordan supervised by a Tunisian medical staff. The FM had a talk with Libyan and Egyptian opposite numbers; They exchanged views on several regional issues, notably the Syrian file and the agreement signed between Sudan and South of Sudan, according to the same source.