UN Syria envoy de Mistura offers to travel to Idlib to ensure civilian evacuations
The United Nations Syria envoy offered Thursday to travel to Idlib to help ensure civilians can leave through a humanitarian corridor amid fears of full-scale military operations in the area.
“I am once again prepared … personally and physically to get involved myself, with the government cooperation this time … to ensure such a temporary corridor would be feasible and guaranteed for the people so that they can then return to their own places once this is over,” Staffan de Mistura told reporters in Geneva on Thursday, August 30.
On Tuesday, a U.N. spokesperson said de Mistura planned to convene a one-day meeting on Syria in Geneva on September 14 with senior representatives from Egypt, France, Germany, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The meeting, Alessandra Vellucci said, will focus on “the way ahead on the political process” for Syria, “including the U.N. effort to facilitate the establishment of a constitutional committee.”
His comments Thursday come ahead of an expected Syrian government assault on Idlib province backed by Russian forces.
Idlib has over the last years become an increasingly densely-populated region where problems in resolving the seven-year civil war were effectively dumped to be resolved at a later date.
With reporting from AFP
