News (Consolidated) - UNSOM

Jan Egeland: We just finished the fifth of the taskforce meeting on humanitarian matters of the ISSG, International Support Group for Syria. We could report that today the third convoy to the four towns has been able to go on its way. They are delivering as we speak to Madaya, to Zabadani, to…

Staffan de Mistura (SdeM): Good evening. Well, it is a good thing to recap. We had today three events, and you must have had already one debriefing on that. We had the Humanitarian Task Force. Jan Egeland debriefed you on that. And the perception we have is that the progress this time is being slow…

SdeM: Good afternoon, today is the end of the first week. The first week of what we have been waiting for, for a very long time, Intra-Syrian talks. It has coincided to a large degree, today there were some incidents, but to a large degree, to a substantial reduction of violence. I have been…

SdeM: Good evening. First of all some logistics. Today the meetings took place both with the government, and I think you had the opportunity of listening to Ambassador Jaafari about his own take on the meeting with us, and then with civil society. Tomorrow will be the HNC in particular and others…

[In response to a question about the composition of the Syrian Women’s Advisory Board delegation, the Special Envoy said the following before delivering his own statement at the stakeout.] SdeM: I can tell you that they really represent various realities of the Syrian situation. One of them is a…

JE: We are making further progress in getting access to the civilian population in Syria and we are concentrating, in the taskforce on humanitarian access, on the besieged areas but also equally important the so-called hard-to-reach areas. Importantly, last night we were able to reach – with an…

SdeM: I am delighted to be able to be together with the EU High Representative, Federica Mogherini, who has been asked by me, and I am very grateful to you, for being here on a special day. Not only because it is an occasion for all of us at the UN to, through you, express our strong solidarity to…

Moderator: Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for your patience. Here we are at the end of the first round of the Intra-Syrian talks. You’ve heard the UN Special Envoy almost every day since the beginning of these talks and tonight he intends to give you a wrap-up of where we are. A few comments…

JE: Thank you very much, we just finished a meeting with the ISSG task force on humanitarian access to Syria, we reviewed and compared progress this year compared to last year. 2015 did, in the first three months give us access to only one besieged area that was Yarmouk at the time. All the other…

Staffan de Mistura (SdM): The main reason for meeting you today is actually to give you a little bit the overall scenario in what direction we are going, because you have the right to know how this will proceed and what is happening Since you have been so much involved already in the past, let me…

Jan Egeland (JE): We had our eighth meeting of the Task Force on Humanitarian Access. We have been working for nearly two months and April was supposed to be our best month. It’s not looking so. So far I am disappointed and disheartened at what we achieved over the last week. We have a new procedure…

Good afternoon everyone. I just ended some talks and discussions with His Excellency the Foreign Minister (Walid) Muallem and his team. The purpose was to discuss the preparation of the Geneva talks. The Geneva talks which we are planning to start, as you know, on the 13 th of April, upon my return…