On eve of Syrian peace conference, Ban holds intensive talks with participants

21 January 2014 – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Switzerland today on the eve of a United Nations-led conference on ending the nearly three-year-old Syrian civil war and immediately went into talks with participants from various countries and regional organizations involved.

Mr. Ban, who will tomorrow open the high-level part of the conference in Montreux, held discussions while still in Geneva with the High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, on various aspects of the crisis, including efforts to bring humanitarian relief to a country where millions have been driven from their homes and many suffer from lack of food and medicines.

He then flew by helicopter to Montreux, where representatives of some 40 countries and regional organizations began gathering for tomorrow’s meeting. This will be followed on Friday by talks between the Syrian parties at UN headquarters in Geneva in what will be the first time the Government and opposition meet at a negotiating table since the conflict started in March 2011.

In Montreux, Mr. Ban met with Nabil Elaraby, the Secretary General of the League of Arab States. They discussed the high-level segment of the Conference and subsequent intra-Syrian negotiations in Geneva. They shared concerns about the impact of the crisis on the region, in particular on the neighbouring countries, and discussed the issue of blocked humanitarian access, according to a note issued by Mr. Ban’s spokesperson in New York.

The basis of these talks is full implementation of an action plan adopted in the so-called Geneva Communique of 2012, which calls for a transitional government to lead to free and fair elections.

Participants will also seek to make arrangements for humanitarian aid to flow into a country where well over 100,000 people have been killed and more than 8 million others driven from their homes since the conflict erupted between the Government and various groups seeking the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Montreux meeting is designed to give international support to the efforts to resolve the deadly conflict that has torn Syria apart, while the Geneva talks will be restricted to the two Syrian delegations and the UN-Arab League Joint Special Representative Lakhdar Brahimi, who is organizing the conference.