Red Cross staff freed after Syria abduction
Four International Red Cross workers who were abducted in Syria at the weekend were released unharmed on Monday.
Robert Mardini, the ICRC’s head of operations for the Middle East, confirmed that three staffers and one Syrian volunteer were now “safe and sound”. The fate of three others kidnapped in north-western Syria was unknown.
The news came as Syrian rebels were urged to agree to local ceasefires to allow access for the international inspectors who are working to locate and destroy the government’s chemical weapons arsenal.
Ahmet Uzumcu, of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), told the BBC that Syrian officials had been co-operative. The experts had already reached five of at least 20 facilities capable of producing chemical weapons. But routes to some of the sites went through opposition-held territory and this prevented access.
“They change hands from one day to another, which is why we appeal to all sides to support this mission, to be co-operative and not render this mission more difficult,” he said. “It’s already challenging.”
The OPCW and the UN have had a team of 60 experts and support staff in Syria since 1 October. Uzumcu said he hoped the Nobel peace prize awarded to the group last week would help their work.
President Bashar al-Assad, meanwhile, told the Lebanese paper al-Akhbar that Syria had stopped manufacturing chemical agents in 1997 because they became an “outdated deterrent” weapon, and had since concentrated on its missile capabilities. Asked about the OPCW getting the Nobel prize, Assad attempted a joke, saying: “This prize should have been mine.”
A car bomb in the northern province of Idlib reportedly killed at least 15 people on Monday. It exploded in Darkoush, near the Turkish border, where the marketplace was busy with shoppers on the eve of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. On Sunday two car bombs exploded in the centre of Damascus near the heavily guarded state television building.
Prospects for diplomacy still look poor, despite a call by the US secretary of state, John Kerry, for the urgent convening of an international conference. “There has to be a transition government, there has to be a new governing entity in Syria in order to permit the possibility of peace,” Kerry said after talks in London with the UN’s Syria envoy, Lakdhar Brahimi. It was imperative to get the Geneva II conference organised by a mid-November target the United Nations has set.
“There can be, there will be, a political solution if everyone gets together and works for it,” Brahimi said. “Very soon we have to set a precise date.”
Syria’s civil war, now in its third year, has killed more than 100,000 people. Geneva II is aimed at implementing an agreement hammered out last year in the Swiss city. It calls for the establishment of a transitional government that would run Syria and prepare it for democratic elections.
The Syrian government has said it will attend the conference, though it has insisted it will not talk to “terrorists” – its blanket term for all opposition forces. Prospects for opposition attendance are less certain. The Syrian Opposition Coalition has said it will attend, but one key constituent group, the Syrian National Council, announced at the weekend that it would not go. “Nothing useful will come out for Syrians from attending the meeting,” said the SNC leader, George Sabra.
Eleven powerful Islamist and jihadi groups, including some of the biggest fighting units on the ground, said last month that they would not recognise the authority of the SOC, the main western-backed opposition umbrella group.
Brahimi said he would travel to the Middle East this week to see representatives of all sides to try to plan and set a specific date for the Geneva meeting.
theguardian