Daily Times

The UN’s Syria envoy said he held “very good discussions” in Damascus Saturday, and expressed hopes that a committee to discuss a post-war constitution for the country could soon reconvene.

“We had very substantial, very good discussions,” Norwegian diplomat Geir Pedersen said after meeting Syria’s Foreign Minister Faisal al-Meqdad.

“We discussed… the economic and humanitarian challenges here in Syria, the challenges when it comes to livelihoods, and what we all can do the help to improve that situation.”

The envoy said he hoped “to move forward also on the constitutional committee” working towards a post-war constitution, and that it would be “possible to call for a sixth round” of talks between its members.

The UN-backed committee made up of 45 people — 15 delegates each representing the Damascus regime, the opposition and civil society — was created in September 2019 but has since made little headway.

Pedersen said a fifth session in January had been “a missed opportunity and disappointment”.

Since then, Bashar al-Assad in July took the oath of office for a fourth term as Syria’s president, after officially winning 95 percent of the vote in an election dismissed abroad.

After clawing back large parts of the country from rebels and jihadists with key Russian backing over the years, he vowed to make “liberating those parts of the homeland that still need to be” one of his top priorities.

Endless rounds of UN-backed peace talks have failed to stem Syria’s war, which has killed around 500,000 people and displaced millions since it started with the brutal suppression of anti-government protests in 2011.

In recent years UN efforts have instead focused around the work of the constitutional committee.

TWO TURKISH SOLDIERS KILLED IN SYRIA: Meanwhile, two Turkish soldiers were killed Saturday and three others injured in an attack in the northwestern Syrian region of Idlib, the Turkish defence ministry said.

The attackers targeted “a unit returning from a patrol”, the ministry said, without giving details on the type of assault.

An AFP reporter on the scene said it was a bomb blast on the Idlib-Bennish road.

Idlib is home to the last major jihadist and rebel stronghold in northwest Syria.

After several successive offensives by government forces, a ceasefire was negotiated with the Syrian regime, but some groups have rejected this agreement. The truce, brokered by neighbouring Turkey — which backs some rebel groups — and Syrian regime ally Russia, has largely been in force since March 2020, despite sporadic clashes.