Assad, Russia blamed for Syria peace talks collapse

Western ministers and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday urged Russia to halt its airstrikes in Syria, implicitly bombing Moscow for the collapse of peace talks.
UN envoy Staffan de Mistura halted his efforts to Ibegin a dialogue between Assad’s regime and the Syrian opposition after the Syrian army, backed by Russian air strikes, advanced against rebel forces north of Aleppo, choking opposition supply lines from Turkey to the city.
Erdogan said Syrian peace talks were pointless while President Bashar Assad’s forces and Russia continued their attacks in the country.
“Russia continues to kill people in Syria. Could there be such a peace gathering? Could there be such peace talks?” Erdogan said in a speech in Peru, in comments published on the presidency website.
“In an environment where children are still being killed, such attempts do not have any function apart from making things easier for the tyrant,” he said.
US Secretary of State John Kerry demanded an immediate halt to the Russia bombing of the Syrian opposition.
Speaking in London ahead of a conference on the Syrian humanitarian effort, Kerry said he had called Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for a “robust” discussion.
Alongside Britain’s Foreign Minister Phillip Hammond, Kerry read out sections of UN Security Council resolution 2254, passed in December, calling for an immediate cease-fire.
“Russia has a responsibility, as do all parties, to live up to it,” he said.
“So I had a conversation this morning with Foreign Minister Lavrov. We discussed, and we agreed, that we need to discuss how to implement the cease-fire.”
Kerry also said that both parties to the conflict — the rebels and the regime and its allies — must allow access to besieged areas for humanitarian aid.
A senior UN official said the Russian escalation was the main reason for the suspension of the talks.
Russian air strikes have killed nearly 1,400 civilians since Moscow started its aerial campaign in support of Assad nearly four months ago, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said on Saturday.
Moscow says there will be no respite in its air campaign, which it says targets “terrorists.”
Turkey has warned that Russia’s actions risk exacerbating a refugee crisis, just as Ankara is trying to stem the flow of migrants to Europe under an agreement with the European Union.
EU countries on Wednesday approved 3 billion euro ($3.35 billion) in funding to help Turkey improve living conditions for refugees in return for its help ensuring fewer leave for Europe.
Also on offer to Ankara, which wants to revive relations with its European neighbors after years of coolness, is a “re-energised” negotiating process on Turkish membership of the EU. But Erdogan said not enough progress had been made.
“They agreed that Turkey is a key country in solving the migrant crisis ... Our accession process has accelerated. But we still haven’t seen the concrete steps that we have been expecting,” he said, without elaborating.
German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier said that talks for a political solution to end the civil war in Syria were difficult, but he was not without hope.
“In the coming days, we have to and will speak particularly with Russia about how we can get improvements especially on the humanitarian side,” Steinmeier said during a visit in the Saudi capital Riyadh.
There would be a chance for further talks between ministers in Munich next week on the sidelines of the annual security conference, he added.

SourcE: Arab News