UN Syria Envoy to Make Peace Conference Push at G20

2013/09/05

STRELNA/MOSCOW, September 5 (RIA Novosti) – The United Nations special envoy for Syria will attend the G20 summit of world leaders in St. Petersburg to boost efforts to convene a peace conference on Syria, a UN spokesman said Thursday.


The spokesman said that now, while the world is focused on the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria, it is even more important to renew efforts to convene an international peace conference on Syria in Geneva (known as “Geneva 2”).


Russia and the US agreed in early May to hold an international conference aimed at facilitating a solution through political dialogue to the Syrian crisis, designed to be a follow-up to last summer’s meeting in Geneva that drafted a peace roadmap for Syria.


The G20 summit is taking place September 5 and 6 in the St. Petersburg suburb Strelna. The annual international leaders’ meeting usually focuses on economic issues, but is taking place this year against a background of possible intervention in the Syrian conflict by the United States and France, strongly opposed by Russia.


Amid reports of a possible meeting on Syria between US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the G20, Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalists at the G20 Thursday that "a separate meeting [between Putin and Obama] is not planned but there will, nonetheless, be some kind of conversations."



© RIA Novosti.





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