Syria talks to resume Thursday with same participants

GENEVA The UN on Tuesday urged those attending this week’s Syria peace talks to engage “substantively and proactively”. The next round of the negotiations will be staged in Geneva on Thursday. “All invitees who had already attended the previous round of talks in February 2017 have confirmed their participation,” Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy for Syria said in a statement. Previous attendees were delegates for the Syrian regime, headed by Bashar al-Ja’aafari, and representatives of the opposition, led by Nasr Hariri from the High Negotiations Committee. The Cairo and Moscow-based opposition also participated in the last round. De Mistura visited Saudi capital Riyadh over the weekend, his office said, and he is due to travel to Moscow and Ankara before returning to Geneva on Thursday. Thursday’s agenda will focus on governance, constitutional issues, elections, security and confidence-building. In the statement, de Mistura urged the participants to “do the necessary preparations in advance of the fifth round to be ready to engage substantively and proactively on the substance of all four baskets on the agenda in parallel.” The last round of talks began on Feb. 23 and ended on March 4 without any clear result. Since civil war in Syria erupted in March 2011, more than 250,000 people have been killed, according to the UN. The Syrian Center for Policy Research puts the death toll at more than 470,000.