UN monitors face risky mission in Syria
One million
displaced in Syria: UN chief
GENEVA: At least a million people
have been displaced inside Syria during a 13-month crackdown on dissent,
United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon said Saturday.
“We are very much concerned that at
least one million people have been displaced inside Syria and there are
still many Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries,” said the
secretary general in comments issued by the UN following his meeting
with peace envoy Kofi Annan in Geneva. AFP
UNITED NATIONS: UN monitors arriving in Syria are starting a perilous
mission as there is no formal ceasefire between President Bashar al-Assad
and opposition forces, diplomats said. “No ceasefire, not even the start
of a political process, this will be one of the most difficult UN
missions ever,” said one senior envoy at the United Nations.
The Syrian government is responsible for the safety of the 30 unarmed
monitors who will be deployed in coming days, a UN Security Council
resolution which approved the force stressed.
But with new attacks reported as the council voted on Saturday,
Western nations have expressed widespread doubts that Assad plans to
keep to the cessation of hostilities that started on Thursday.
The UN often sends military observers into trouble zones, they are
widely known in missions around the world as the UNMOs (UN military
observers) -- “the eyes and ears of the Security Council.” But the
observers who went between Pakistani and Indian forces in 1948,
separated Turkish and Greek-Cypriot fighters in Cyprus in 1974 and
Maoist rebels and government forces Nepal in 2006 followed the signing
of ceasefire agreements.
About six of the advanced team of 30 observers were to arrive Sunday
in Damascus. UN-Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan wants more than 250
in all but they can only leave if the fragile truce holds.
The first group got a plane from New York straight after Security
Council resolution was passed.
The next 25 will come from missions around the Middle East and Africa
“so we can move people quickly and they are experienced in the region,”
UN peacekeeping department spokesman Kieran Dwyer told AFP.
After setting up an operating headquarters in Damascus “they will
quickly reach out to contacts both within the Syrian government, and
their security forces, and with the opposition forces so that all sides
fully understand their monitoring role,” said Dwyer.
“They will visit other cities quickly to establish where they need to
set up bases as the team is built up and also to reach out to have
contacts in the other cities.” The advanced team will have to establish
a routine “moving about and liaising on a day-to-day basis and
monitoring that the violence has actually stopped,” the spokesman added.
The observers will report to Annan and the UN headquarters in New York
so that the Security Council can decide on the next steps in the
mission.
The monitoring mission is just one part of the six-point peace plan
that the Syrian president agreed with Annan.
“Joint Special Envoy Annan will continue to work on the other parts
of the six-point plan,” said Dwyer. “The monitors are not going to do
any political work and people must not have overly ambitious
expectations of what monitors can do,” said the UN spokesman.
“As the security council has said, and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
has said: It is the responsibility of the Syrian government and
opposition to cease all forms of violence and ensure that this cessation
holds,” Dwyer stated.
The shelling of rebel districts in Homs and firing on funeral
mourners in Aleppo on Saturday reinforced the dangers of the mission.
“This resumed violence casts serious doubts yet again on the regime's
commitment to a cessation of violence,” US ambassador Susan Rice told
the UN Security Council after the vote allowing the advance party.
AFP |