Tuesday, January 28, 2014 8:16:26 PM
At Neutral Site, Syrians Feel Free to Confront the Other Side
By ANNE BARNARD and HWAIDA SAADJAN. 27, 2014
Bouthaina Shaaban, center, a Syrian presidential adviser, after a briefing with journalists in
Geneva. Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
GENEVA — For Syrian officials, a lakeside idyll here, far from their country’s war, has been marred by what plainly feels to them like an endless stream of impertinent questions .. http://youtu.be/yUPbGAWcplQ .
They have been asked why their government is bombing its citizens, when their president is leaving office, what happened to a British doctor who died suspiciously in a Syrian government prison. They have even been offered the coordinates of jihadist fighters — and asked if they will drop bombs on them instead of on civilians.
The questions that gall them the most, judging by their reactions, are not from the foreigners whose queries they are accustomed to viewing as part of a “media war.” The ones that really nettle them come from Syrians.
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Second Cargo of Chemical Agents Leaves Syria as Pace Is Criticized JAN. 27, 2014
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Video Feature: Watching Syria's War: Bombardment on a Damascus Suburb
http://projects.nytimes.com/watching-syrias-war
Opposition activists and citizen journalists pop up everywhere: in hotel lobbies, on sidewalks, even at a breakfast table overlooking snowcapped mountains. They hound the officials with a doggedness reminiscent of Michael Moore’s hunt for Roger Smith, then the chief executive of General Motors, in his classic documentary “Roger & Me.”
Crisis in Syria
News, analysis and photos of the conflict that has left more than 100,000 dead and millions displaced.
Full Coverage » http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/syria/
It is an encounter that neither side has experienced before, and in some ways it is the most significant thing taking place at a peace conference that has been more about optics than results. Here in neutral and secure Switzerland, Syrian government delegates used to meeting journalists only inside a government-controlled bubble are finding that almost anyone can come up to them anytime, anywhere, and ask anything.
It is a surreal experience, too, for Syrian activists like Adnan Hadad of Aleppo, who sees it this way: “If we tried this in Syria, they would torture us to death.”
New encounters — some cordial, some not — have swept Syrians of all stripes out of their comfort zones. That could make a difference eventually, in a war so polarized that opposing sides do not even agree on basic facts, let alone on how to solve the conflict and on who is most responsible.
Yet the government bubble is far older than the war. An Arab journalist who worked in Syria for years said government delegates probably had “never seen, let alone spoken to, anyone in the opposition.”
So for them to sit across from Haitham al-Maleh, an opposition delegate in his 80s who is a former political prisoner, is “historic,” the journalist said, “as if people from the Stalinist system suddenly sat down with Solzhenitsyn or Sakharov.”
“ ‘Darkness at Noon,’ you have to think in these terms,” the journalist added, referring to the book about Soviet repression and speaking anonymously to freely express his personal views.
New encounters have taken place on a lower level, too. Old friends now on opposite sides shake hands, or avoid each other. Crammed in with the activists in media rooms are journalists from Hezbollah’s Al Manar channel and the state-run Syrian news media — an unusually large delegation, leading activists to suspect that some are there to keep an eye on colleagues rather than to report.
On the first day of the conference, in nearby Montreux, Mr. Hadad, 29, and another antigovernment activist, Rami Jarrah, waded into a crowd of demonstrators who support Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. With a cameraman, they asked them if they would accept Mr. Assad’s ouster through negotiations. Many protesters answered politely, but others yelled, “God, Bashar and nothing else!” and began shoving and shouting. A man grabbed Mr. Hadad’s phone and threw it.
“This is what they do in the middle of Europe. Imagine what they can do to people in Syria,” Mr. Hadad said.
“They do not respect other opinions,” Mr. Hadad said. “The way they respond is by violence.”
Inside, another opposition journalist, Ahmad Zakariya, asked Omran Zoubi, the government’s information minister, when Mr. Assad would resign. Mr. Zoubi exclaimed: “Assad won’t leave! Assad won’t leave!” Then a man grabbed Mr. Zakariya from behind and crumpled his press card.
Later, in Geneva, the deputy foreign minister, Fayssal Mekdad, chided Mr. Zakariya for asking if Mr. Assad was using starvation as a weapon. “Yes, that is one of the allegations made by the terrorist groups,” he said. “Maybe you are representing one of them.”
Monzer Akbik, an opposition spokesman, briefed the news media. Fabrice Coffrini/
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Some opposition activists found the encounter frightening. A woman who goes by the name Lina Shami feared for family members still in Syria; her real name was on her conference badge. When an Iranian journalist craned his neck to see it, she said, she buttoned her sweater.
An opposition member said that when he approached a former girlfriend, a state media journalist, no one was near, but she shushed him, he said, as if they were being recorded.
Opposition members also missed chances to connect. A pro-government journalist who gave his name only as Samir met Michel Kilo, a fellow Christian and a longtime opposition leader, for the first time, and asked him about attacks on his town, Maaloula. Mr. Kilo blamed the government and said insurgents had killed three men there not because they were Christians but because they were government thugs. “I said, ‘At least, if you want to work in politics and you want people to accept you, refuse and condemn terrorism,’ ” Samir said. “He repeated, ‘The regime is behind this.’ ”
Some conversations, though, crept from hostility to real exchange. In Geneva, Alisar Maala, a Syrian state television anchor, said she was reassured when a reporter from Al Jazeera, the pro-rebel Qatari-owned station, condemned violence.
“We agreed on one thing,” Ms. Maala said. “The killing in Syria needs to stop.”
Later, Mr. Hadad said, a reporter from Al Manar introduced himself by saying, “I’m Hezbollah.”
“Do you think we’re happy you’re slaughtering the Syrians?” Mr. Hadad said he answered. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, has intervened on the government’s side. The man replied that Hezbollah was fighting to protect a revered shrine near Damascus, the Syrian capital.
“You killed half of Syria for the sake of a shrine,” Mr. Hadad said, and anger flickered across the man’s face.
“If I were in an Arab country, I wouldn’t dare,” Mr. Hadad recalled. He said he then relented and told the man that dialogue between them would help.
The tension then eased, Mr. Hadad said, and pro-government reporters expressed curiosity about his opposition radio station, Radio Hara. When Mr. Jarrah told one, “I can smell Syria on you,” he recalled, the man softened and “started asking real questions.”
They had less luck with officials. One morning, Mr. Jarrah walked up to Mr. Assad’s longtime adviser, Bouthaina Shaaban, at her hotel breakfast table. The abortive encounter was briefly captured on video; a man with Ms. Shaaban appeared to shove the cameraman and cover the lens with his hand.
Mr. Hadad said he hoped, but doubted, that coming face to face with how they are seen by the rest of the world had changed the minds of his opponents. But he said a chance to talk safely was, for now, enough.
“Some of those people are aware of what’s happening,” he said. “Deep down they want to leave this situation they’re living in, but they are under a huge threat and pressure. They are surrounded by the secret police.”
Correction: January 28, 2014
An earlier version of this article misstated the age of Adnan Hadad and misidentified his radio station. He is 29, not 24, and his station is Radio Hara, not Radio al-Kul.
Correction: January 28, 2014
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misquoted Mr. Hadad. He said he hoped that his opponents — not the rebels — had changed their minds after coming face to face with how they are seen by the rest of the world.
Hala Droubi contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on January 28, 2014, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: At Neutral Site, Syrians Feel Free to Confront. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/world/middleeast/at-neutral-site-syrians-feel-free-to-confront-the-other-side.html
.. better talking than not ..
====
Brahimi: Syria peace talks slow but 'still at it'
Associated Press January 28, 2014 - 3:05 PM
----
FILE - This is a Saturday, Jan. 25, 2014. file photo of U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi gestures during a press briefing at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, The U.N. mediator trying to broker peace after three years of civil war in Syria says "we haven't achieved much" after two brief face-to-face encounters between the government and the opposition. Brahimi has seen faces like these before, barely able to remain in the same room, much less speak to each other. Lebanese, Afghans, Iraqis, now Syrians. Even, two decades ago, Algerians like himself. For days now, the veteran U.N. mediator has presided over peace talks intended to lead the way out of Syria's civil war. He brought President Bashar Assad's government and the opposition face to face for the first time on Saturday, while still ensuring that they don't have to enter by the same door or address each other directly. He is 80. He is patient.(AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus, File)
----
GENEVA (AP) — Syrian government anger over a U.S. decision to resume aid to the opposition prompted the U.N. mediator to cut short Tuesday's peace talks, but he said no one was to blame for the impasse and that the negotiations would continue.
A deal to allow humanitarian aid into Homs remained stalled, with the Syrian delegation demanding assurances the U.S. aid will not go to "armed and terrorist groups" in the besieged city.
U.N.-Arab League mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said he was relieved that the government and opposition said they will remain in the daily talks through Friday, as planned.
"Nobody's walking out. Nobody's running away," he told reporters. "We have not actually made a breakthrough, but we are still at it, and this is enough as far as I'm concerned."
Tuesday's talks were the fifth day of negotiations regarding the civil war, focusing on opposition calls for the formation of a transition government in Syria and help for Homs.
But there has been little progress toward resolving a key issue of whether President Bashar Assad should step aside and transfer power to a transitional government.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, whose country has been a key Syrian ally, said Moscow wants to avoid "another obsession with regime change because of somebody's personal animosity, personal hatred to a particular individual."
"Imagine Assad disappears. Who is going to keep it together? There is no answer," Lavrov said in Brussels, where a Russia-European Union summit was being held.
Brahimi said he decided to cut short Tuesday's talks "without any request or pressure from anyone."
He confirmed that the Syrian government delegation had talked at length about its opposition to the resumption of U.S. aid.
"We believe this is not the best present to the Geneva conference," said Faisal al-Mikdad, Syria's deputy foreign minister, calling the American decision "another manifestation of U.S. support for "terrorist groups" in Syria.
"This proves again that the United States is not interested in the success of this process, and we believe the U.S. has to desist and stop its claims that it is interested in the success of this conference," he told reporters.
American officials said Monday the U.S. has restarted deliveries of nonlethal aid to the Syrian opposition, more than a month after al-Qaida-linked militants seized warehouses and prompted a sudden cutoff of Western supplies to the rebels.
The officials said the communications equipment and other items are being funneled only to non-armed opposition groups, but the move boosts Syria's beleaguered rebels, who saw their international support slide, in large part because of the extremists among their ranks.
"Any notion that we support terrorists is ludicrous. The Assad regime is a magnet for terrorists," U.S. State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez said in a statement.
Vasquez accused the Syrian government of "evading the core purpose of the Geneva talks," which is to reach a negotiated political solution for ending the war and suffering of Syrians.
Brahimi opened the morning session reviewing the principles of the Geneva Communique of June 2012, a broad but ambiguous proposal endorsed by Western powers and Russia to provide a basis for negotiations. Assad's role in any transitional government was a red line during those negotiations and left vague. The U.S. and Russia disagreed about Assad's role, but they signed the communique.
Murhaf Joueijati, a member of the opposition Syrian National Coalition's negotiating team, said Tuesday's session was cut short to give Syria time to make its proposal about the future of the country within the context of the 2012 accord.
On Monday, the government presented a working paper on Syria's future, which Joueijati said the opposition rejected because it "had nothing to do with a transitional government."
Assad's family, from Syria's Alawite minority, has ruled the country since 1970, pulling other religious minorities into its political orbit while rebellions by members of the Sunni majority were crushed. Today's civil war began as a peaceful uprising for freedom and rights in March 2011, but it has deepened the country's sectarian divide and that could add to the difficulties of forming a transitional government.
Joueijati accused the government of holding up the delivery of aid to Homs, which has been under siege for nearly two years.
One complication in doing that and evacuating the city's residents is that the opposition delegation does not control armed groups inside Syria, including al-Qaida-backed militants, who do not feel bound by agreements reached in Geneva. These groups gained control of Syria's uprising as it evolved into an insurgency.
___
Juergen Baetz in Brussels contributed.
(Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/brahimi-syria-peace-talks-slow-still-it
By ANNE BARNARD and HWAIDA SAADJAN. 27, 2014
Bouthaina Shaaban, center, a Syrian presidential adviser, after a briefing with journalists in
Geneva. Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
GENEVA — For Syrian officials, a lakeside idyll here, far from their country’s war, has been marred by what plainly feels to them like an endless stream of impertinent questions .. http://youtu.be/yUPbGAWcplQ .
They have been asked why their government is bombing its citizens, when their president is leaving office, what happened to a British doctor who died suspiciously in a Syrian government prison. They have even been offered the coordinates of jihadist fighters — and asked if they will drop bombs on them instead of on civilians.
The questions that gall them the most, judging by their reactions, are not from the foreigners whose queries they are accustomed to viewing as part of a “media war.” The ones that really nettle them come from Syrians.
Related Coverage
Syria Talks Fail to Yield Pact to Lift Aid Blockade JAN. 27, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/world/middleeast/syria-talks-fail-to-yield-pact-to-lift-aid-blockade.html
Second Cargo of Chemical Agents Leaves Syria as Pace Is Criticized JAN. 27, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/world/middleeast/second-cargo-of-chemical-agents-leaves-syria-as-pace-is-criticized.html
Video Feature: Watching Syria's War: Bombardment on a Damascus Suburb
http://projects.nytimes.com/watching-syrias-war
Opposition activists and citizen journalists pop up everywhere: in hotel lobbies, on sidewalks, even at a breakfast table overlooking snowcapped mountains. They hound the officials with a doggedness reminiscent of Michael Moore’s hunt for Roger Smith, then the chief executive of General Motors, in his classic documentary “Roger & Me.”
Crisis in Syria
News, analysis and photos of the conflict that has left more than 100,000 dead and millions displaced.
Full Coverage » http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/syria/
It is an encounter that neither side has experienced before, and in some ways it is the most significant thing taking place at a peace conference that has been more about optics than results. Here in neutral and secure Switzerland, Syrian government delegates used to meeting journalists only inside a government-controlled bubble are finding that almost anyone can come up to them anytime, anywhere, and ask anything.
It is a surreal experience, too, for Syrian activists like Adnan Hadad of Aleppo, who sees it this way: “If we tried this in Syria, they would torture us to death.”
New encounters — some cordial, some not — have swept Syrians of all stripes out of their comfort zones. That could make a difference eventually, in a war so polarized that opposing sides do not even agree on basic facts, let alone on how to solve the conflict and on who is most responsible.
Yet the government bubble is far older than the war. An Arab journalist who worked in Syria for years said government delegates probably had “never seen, let alone spoken to, anyone in the opposition.”
So for them to sit across from Haitham al-Maleh, an opposition delegate in his 80s who is a former political prisoner, is “historic,” the journalist said, “as if people from the Stalinist system suddenly sat down with Solzhenitsyn or Sakharov.”
“ ‘Darkness at Noon,’ you have to think in these terms,” the journalist added, referring to the book about Soviet repression and speaking anonymously to freely express his personal views.
New encounters have taken place on a lower level, too. Old friends now on opposite sides shake hands, or avoid each other. Crammed in with the activists in media rooms are journalists from Hezbollah’s Al Manar channel and the state-run Syrian news media — an unusually large delegation, leading activists to suspect that some are there to keep an eye on colleagues rather than to report.
On the first day of the conference, in nearby Montreux, Mr. Hadad, 29, and another antigovernment activist, Rami Jarrah, waded into a crowd of demonstrators who support Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. With a cameraman, they asked them if they would accept Mr. Assad’s ouster through negotiations. Many protesters answered politely, but others yelled, “God, Bashar and nothing else!” and began shoving and shouting. A man grabbed Mr. Hadad’s phone and threw it.
“This is what they do in the middle of Europe. Imagine what they can do to people in Syria,” Mr. Hadad said.
“They do not respect other opinions,” Mr. Hadad said. “The way they respond is by violence.”
Inside, another opposition journalist, Ahmad Zakariya, asked Omran Zoubi, the government’s information minister, when Mr. Assad would resign. Mr. Zoubi exclaimed: “Assad won’t leave! Assad won’t leave!” Then a man grabbed Mr. Zakariya from behind and crumpled his press card.
Later, in Geneva, the deputy foreign minister, Fayssal Mekdad, chided Mr. Zakariya for asking if Mr. Assad was using starvation as a weapon. “Yes, that is one of the allegations made by the terrorist groups,” he said. “Maybe you are representing one of them.”
Monzer Akbik, an opposition spokesman, briefed the news media. Fabrice Coffrini/
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Some opposition activists found the encounter frightening. A woman who goes by the name Lina Shami feared for family members still in Syria; her real name was on her conference badge. When an Iranian journalist craned his neck to see it, she said, she buttoned her sweater.
An opposition member said that when he approached a former girlfriend, a state media journalist, no one was near, but she shushed him, he said, as if they were being recorded.
Opposition members also missed chances to connect. A pro-government journalist who gave his name only as Samir met Michel Kilo, a fellow Christian and a longtime opposition leader, for the first time, and asked him about attacks on his town, Maaloula. Mr. Kilo blamed the government and said insurgents had killed three men there not because they were Christians but because they were government thugs. “I said, ‘At least, if you want to work in politics and you want people to accept you, refuse and condemn terrorism,’ ” Samir said. “He repeated, ‘The regime is behind this.’ ”
Some conversations, though, crept from hostility to real exchange. In Geneva, Alisar Maala, a Syrian state television anchor, said she was reassured when a reporter from Al Jazeera, the pro-rebel Qatari-owned station, condemned violence.
“We agreed on one thing,” Ms. Maala said. “The killing in Syria needs to stop.”
Later, Mr. Hadad said, a reporter from Al Manar introduced himself by saying, “I’m Hezbollah.”
“Do you think we’re happy you’re slaughtering the Syrians?” Mr. Hadad said he answered. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, has intervened on the government’s side. The man replied that Hezbollah was fighting to protect a revered shrine near Damascus, the Syrian capital.
“You killed half of Syria for the sake of a shrine,” Mr. Hadad said, and anger flickered across the man’s face.
“If I were in an Arab country, I wouldn’t dare,” Mr. Hadad recalled. He said he then relented and told the man that dialogue between them would help.
The tension then eased, Mr. Hadad said, and pro-government reporters expressed curiosity about his opposition radio station, Radio Hara. When Mr. Jarrah told one, “I can smell Syria on you,” he recalled, the man softened and “started asking real questions.”
They had less luck with officials. One morning, Mr. Jarrah walked up to Mr. Assad’s longtime adviser, Bouthaina Shaaban, at her hotel breakfast table. The abortive encounter was briefly captured on video; a man with Ms. Shaaban appeared to shove the cameraman and cover the lens with his hand.
Mr. Hadad said he hoped, but doubted, that coming face to face with how they are seen by the rest of the world had changed the minds of his opponents. But he said a chance to talk safely was, for now, enough.
“Some of those people are aware of what’s happening,” he said. “Deep down they want to leave this situation they’re living in, but they are under a huge threat and pressure. They are surrounded by the secret police.”
Correction: January 28, 2014
An earlier version of this article misstated the age of Adnan Hadad and misidentified his radio station. He is 29, not 24, and his station is Radio Hara, not Radio al-Kul.
Correction: January 28, 2014
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misquoted Mr. Hadad. He said he hoped that his opponents — not the rebels — had changed their minds after coming face to face with how they are seen by the rest of the world.
Hala Droubi contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on January 28, 2014, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: At Neutral Site, Syrians Feel Free to Confront. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/world/middleeast/at-neutral-site-syrians-feel-free-to-confront-the-other-side.html
.. better talking than not ..
====
Brahimi: Syria peace talks slow but 'still at it'
Associated Press January 28, 2014 - 3:05 PM
----
FILE - This is a Saturday, Jan. 25, 2014. file photo of U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi gestures during a press briefing at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, The U.N. mediator trying to broker peace after three years of civil war in Syria says "we haven't achieved much" after two brief face-to-face encounters between the government and the opposition. Brahimi has seen faces like these before, barely able to remain in the same room, much less speak to each other. Lebanese, Afghans, Iraqis, now Syrians. Even, two decades ago, Algerians like himself. For days now, the veteran U.N. mediator has presided over peace talks intended to lead the way out of Syria's civil war. He brought President Bashar Assad's government and the opposition face to face for the first time on Saturday, while still ensuring that they don't have to enter by the same door or address each other directly. He is 80. He is patient.(AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus, File)
----
GENEVA (AP) — Syrian government anger over a U.S. decision to resume aid to the opposition prompted the U.N. mediator to cut short Tuesday's peace talks, but he said no one was to blame for the impasse and that the negotiations would continue.
A deal to allow humanitarian aid into Homs remained stalled, with the Syrian delegation demanding assurances the U.S. aid will not go to "armed and terrorist groups" in the besieged city.
U.N.-Arab League mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said he was relieved that the government and opposition said they will remain in the daily talks through Friday, as planned.
"Nobody's walking out. Nobody's running away," he told reporters. "We have not actually made a breakthrough, but we are still at it, and this is enough as far as I'm concerned."
Tuesday's talks were the fifth day of negotiations regarding the civil war, focusing on opposition calls for the formation of a transition government in Syria and help for Homs.
But there has been little progress toward resolving a key issue of whether President Bashar Assad should step aside and transfer power to a transitional government.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, whose country has been a key Syrian ally, said Moscow wants to avoid "another obsession with regime change because of somebody's personal animosity, personal hatred to a particular individual."
"Imagine Assad disappears. Who is going to keep it together? There is no answer," Lavrov said in Brussels, where a Russia-European Union summit was being held.
Brahimi said he decided to cut short Tuesday's talks "without any request or pressure from anyone."
He confirmed that the Syrian government delegation had talked at length about its opposition to the resumption of U.S. aid.
"We believe this is not the best present to the Geneva conference," said Faisal al-Mikdad, Syria's deputy foreign minister, calling the American decision "another manifestation of U.S. support for "terrorist groups" in Syria.
"This proves again that the United States is not interested in the success of this process, and we believe the U.S. has to desist and stop its claims that it is interested in the success of this conference," he told reporters.
American officials said Monday the U.S. has restarted deliveries of nonlethal aid to the Syrian opposition, more than a month after al-Qaida-linked militants seized warehouses and prompted a sudden cutoff of Western supplies to the rebels.
The officials said the communications equipment and other items are being funneled only to non-armed opposition groups, but the move boosts Syria's beleaguered rebels, who saw their international support slide, in large part because of the extremists among their ranks.
"Any notion that we support terrorists is ludicrous. The Assad regime is a magnet for terrorists," U.S. State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez said in a statement.
Vasquez accused the Syrian government of "evading the core purpose of the Geneva talks," which is to reach a negotiated political solution for ending the war and suffering of Syrians.
Brahimi opened the morning session reviewing the principles of the Geneva Communique of June 2012, a broad but ambiguous proposal endorsed by Western powers and Russia to provide a basis for negotiations. Assad's role in any transitional government was a red line during those negotiations and left vague. The U.S. and Russia disagreed about Assad's role, but they signed the communique.
Murhaf Joueijati, a member of the opposition Syrian National Coalition's negotiating team, said Tuesday's session was cut short to give Syria time to make its proposal about the future of the country within the context of the 2012 accord.
On Monday, the government presented a working paper on Syria's future, which Joueijati said the opposition rejected because it "had nothing to do with a transitional government."
Assad's family, from Syria's Alawite minority, has ruled the country since 1970, pulling other religious minorities into its political orbit while rebellions by members of the Sunni majority were crushed. Today's civil war began as a peaceful uprising for freedom and rights in March 2011, but it has deepened the country's sectarian divide and that could add to the difficulties of forming a transitional government.
Joueijati accused the government of holding up the delivery of aid to Homs, which has been under siege for nearly two years.
One complication in doing that and evacuating the city's residents is that the opposition delegation does not control armed groups inside Syria, including al-Qaida-backed militants, who do not feel bound by agreements reached in Geneva. These groups gained control of Syria's uprising as it evolved into an insurgency.
___
Juergen Baetz in Brussels contributed.
(Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/brahimi-syria-peace-talks-slow-still-it
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