Syrian groups and regional powers are positioning themselves for the next round of UN-backed talks due to start on January 25th, which are urgently needed talks, said a daily newspaper in an editorial today. The talks will address one of the world’s greatest manmade humanitarian disasters which "grinds on with 10.6 million people as refugees, more than half of the entire population of Syria, who have been forced to flee the violence," the Gulf News said in an editorial today.

In the context of the widening dispute with Iran, it is good news that Saudi Arabia said that recent tensions will not affect UN operations to achieve a political solution in Geneva. "But it is not encouraging that President Bashar Al Assad’s government has dismissed a new joint opposition body formed to oversee negotiations, and that the opposition wants to see confidence-building steps from Al Assad," it noted.

The paper continued by saying that both demands make the talks harder to start and united pressure from outside will be required to help bring these parties to the table. "A modest piece of good news from Syria was that the sudden outburst of international coverage of the desperate lack of food in Madaya has shamed the government forces into allowing UN humanitarian convoys through," it said.

This is vitally important for the starving people in the village, but it does not help those stuck in similar sieges in Kefraya and Foah in the north, which are besieged by opposition forces. They are among nearly 400,000 people in 15 ongoing sieges who do not have access to life-saving aid and food. If the Geneva talks start, there will be a desperate need for, at the very least, an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, even if temporary, the editorial concluded.

Source: WAM