Syria talks see breakthrough as women and children allowed to leave Homs

Women and children will be allowed to leave the besieged Syrian city of Homs as peace talks in Geneva see a small breakthrough.

A man carries a bag amid damage and debris in the besieged area of Homs on January 26, 2014. Thaer Al Khalidiya/Reuters

BEIRUT // Efforts to secure access for humanitarian aid and the release of political prisoners in Syria saw a small breakthrough during talks in Switzerland on Sunday.

The United Nations special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said that women and children trapped in the beseiged city of Homs would be allowed to leave straight away.

“What we have been told by the government side is that women and children in the besieged area of the old city are welcome to leave immmediately,” Mr Brahimi said after a day of negotiations.

Homs was one of the first areas to rise up against the Syrian regime. Though most residents have fled, activists say about 800 families are trapped there, without regular access to food, medicine and basic necessities.

Mr Brahimi said that as well as women and children, “other civilians are also welcome to leave, but the government needs a list of their names first”.

International backers of the Geneva 2 peace conference, led by the United States and Russia, hoped Mr Brahimi could quickly broker a deal for aid to reach besieged parts of the country and give the negotiations some early momentum.

While the negotations appear to have taken a small step forward, representatives of Syrian president Bashar Al Assad said the talks were failing to address the core issue of fighting “terrorism”, while the opposition said the regime was using “stalling tactics”.

On prisoners, the opposition claimed to have handed a list of thousands of detainees, including women and children, to Mr Brahimi in hope of securing their release.

But the regime delegation insisted it had not been given any names at all, despite the opposition attending the morning’s talks with a large photograph of Abdul Aziz Al Kheyr, a prominent dissident in regime custody.

Thousands of protesters remain in regime jails, according to human-rights groups, including well-known dissidents such as Mazin Darwish, a popular media activist known for insisting the uprising must remain peaceful.

“Unfortunately we felt there was hostility, and an insistence to focus on issues of combating terrorism,” Obaida Nahas, an opposition negotiator, told reporters after the morning’s meeting. “They tried to lecture us,” he said.

Bouthaina Shaaban, a close aide to Mr Al Assad, was dismissive of arranging aid access at such a high-profile meeting.

“The other side came here to discuss a small problem here or there. We came to discuss the future of Syria,” she told reporters.

“We did not come here to bring relief to a region here or a region there. We came here to restore safety and security to our country.”

There was also a high level of incredulity among opposition supporters that access for humanitarian aid is even being considered a subject for horse-trading, rather than access being demanded by the international community, in accordance with the laws of warfare.

Mr Al Assad has repeatedly promised access for aid convoys, even as his forces have besieged neighbourhoods and towns. Civilians trapped inside have begun to die of starvation.

The urgent need for access, and the lack of it, was stressed by the UNRWA, the UN organisation for Palestinian refugees, trying to get food into the Yarmouk camp, a few kilometres from the centre of Damascus.

“The agency is extremely disappointed that – at this point – the assurances given by authorities have not been backed by action on the ground to facilitate regular, rapid entry into Yarmouk,” spokesman Chris Gunness said on Sunday.

Under current agreements, all aid channelled through the UN must pass through Damascus, giving the regime a high level of control over where it goes. UN agencies are not allowed to supply aid across borders to rebel-held areas.

Without progress on aid or prisoners, there was danger of negotiations slipping from their already low starting point.

By the afternoon session, mediated face-to-face talks had been shelved, with the opposing delegations sitting in different rooms, leaving mediators to shuffle between offices.

Ms Shaaban also suggested that the Geneva 1 communique, the ostensible starting point for this latest round of talks, would need to be reconsidered.

“Geneva is not the Koran, it’s not the Gospel,” she told reporters. “Geneva was issued in June 2012. We are now January 26, 2014. The ground has changed. We change according to what this reality requires.”

The Syrian authorities agreed to that earlier deal but have insisted it makes no provision for the removal of Mr Al Assad from power, despite an explicit requirement for establishing a transitional governing body, “formed on the basis of mutual consent” that would “exercise full executive powers”.

Syria’s opposition, which also agreed to that deal, insists on seeing it enforced and has refused to allow Mr Al Assad a place in that transition.

Without a deal on the much less contentious question of aid and prisoners, the issue of a transition of power is due to be discussed on Monday.

Syrian information minister Omran Zoubie, present at the negotiations, has made it clear there is no chance of Mr Al Assad surrendering power.

“If anybody thinks or believes that there is a possibility for what is called the stepping down of President Bashar Al Assad, they live in a mythical world and let them stay in Alice in Wonderland,” he said.

Inside Syria fighting continued on Sunday, including heavy battles around Qadam on the southern edge of Damascus.

Also on Sunday, Ahmed Jarba, head of the Syrian National Coalition, spoke to the UAE foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed.

* With additional reporting by Reuters and Agence France-Presse