Syrian government under pressure to allow aid convoy

[dipsydoodle]

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - The Syrian government came under pressure on Monday to allow aid trucks into the besieged rebel city of Homs as negotiators sought to keep peace talks on track by focussing on humanitarian gestures.

The government said women and children could leave Homs and government and opposition delegates also spoke of releasing prisoners.

The U.N. mediator said he hoped talks, which continue on Monday in Geneva, could move on to broaching the central issue that divides the two sides after three years of civil war - Syria's political future and that of President Bashar al-Assad.

Homs, occupying a strategic location in the centre of the country, has been a key battleground. Assad's forces retook many of the surrounding areas last year, leaving rebels under siege in the city centre, along with thousands of civilians.

Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/01/27/uk-syria-crisis-idUKBREA0J0SX20140127

[pampango]

1. Rec. Thanks for posting, dipsydoodle.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose government has helped Assad resist Western pressure but backs a negotiated peace to prevent the conflict spreading, called for progress on aid, unblocking besieged areas and prisoner exchanges.

Underlining the difficulty of implementing even local agreements on the ground, a U.N. agency trying to deliver aid to a besieged rebel area of Damascus said state checkpoints had hampered its work, despite assurances from the government that it would allow the distributions.

[Jesus Malverde]

2. The ones "under pressure"

Are the pathetic terrorists who want to wage ethnic cleansing, destroy a secular state and impose sharia.

Humanitarian aid for Jabhat al-Nusra...



We drop in on Amjad, a wiry fellow oppositionist who now considers both sides as bad as each other. "When we watch CNN, France 24, even the BBC," he says, "I don't think they are talking about Homs. It is lies." The regime certainly bombs buildings, he says, and it sometimes makes mistakes, but often it's because those buildings are being used as barracks by armed groups. "We are lost between shabiha and debaha," he sighs, using the Arabic word for slaughterers to refer to the rise of puritanical, sectarian Islamism among the rebels.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/12/homs-syria-residents