The talks are not themselves formal peace negotiations, but rather what U.N. officials described as an effort to see whether the will and conditions exist to restart the peace process.
De Mistura will meet separately with each party, including both government and opposition representatives. The Islamic State group and the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra have not been invited to participate.
The U.N. mediated two rounds of peace talks more than a year ago with the goal of brokering a cease-fire and setting into motion a Syrian-led political transition to lead the country out of the crisis.
But those negotiations made little progress, and the situation in Syria has grown more complex with Islamic State fighters seizing large areas in the eastern part of the country while the existing rebel and militant groups continued battling pro-government forces.
At the same time, the conflict's toll on the Syrian people has grown.
Four million Syrian refugees have fled the country, according to U.N. data. More than 1.5 million of them have left since the peace talks broke apart in February 2014. Communities in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt have struggled to cope with the influx of refugees, prompting the U.N. to ask donors for $4.5 billion dollars this year to pay for food, medicine and shelter.
Inside Syria, the fighting has forced 7.6 million people to leave their homes. More than 220,000 people have been killed since the conflict spiraled from peaceful protests against President Bashar al-Assad's government into a civil war.
[voanews.com]
5/5/15
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