Tag Archives: Syria

Lebanese Ex-Minister Sentenced for Plotting Attacks

Former Lebanese Information Minister Michel Samaha gestures at his house after being released in Beirut, Lebanon, January 14, 2016.

By Angus McDowall

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A Lebanese military court on Friday increased to nearly 10 years the jail term for a former minister convicted last year of smuggling explosives and planning attacks, in a case that has underscored the country’s sharp political divisions.

Former information minister Michel Samaha, who has close ties to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was detained in August 2012 and confessed to involvement in a plot for which Damascus’ security chief Ali Mamluk was also indicted.

Syrian officials have denied Damascus was involved, but the allegations exposed rifts in Lebanon, which often break along sectarian lines, over Syria’s long-standing involvement in the country.

Samaha’s initial four-year sentence and later release on bail prompted bitter protests from opponents of Assad, who saw the decisions as unduly lenient and evidence that Damascus and its ally Hezbollah held sway over the justice system.

The case also gained wider regional significance when Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir suggested it was part of the reason Riyadh was withdrawing billions of dollars in aid from Lebanon’s army and security forces.

He said the military court’s granting of bail to Samaha raised questions over the army’s independence from the Shi’ite Hezbollah movement, Lebanon’s main powerbroker and a principle ally of Riyadh’s top regional rival Iran.

On Friday the court set Samaha’s new sentence at 13 years, but in Lebanon a prison year is equivalent to nine months.

“The issuance of the verdict on the terrorist Michel Samaha corrects the former lenient verdict, which we had rejected and declared we would not tolerate,” said former prime minister Saad al-Hariri, a leading critic of Damascus.

Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk, a member of Hariri’s Future Movement, said the new sentence confirmed “the correctness of our trust in the president and members of the court”.

Ashraf Rifi, another Sunni Muslim politician, had resigned his post as justice minister over his granting of bail in January after describing the trial last year as a travesty of justice.

Syria is Lebanon’s largest neighbor and dominated the country from the end of its civil war in 1990 until 2005, when U.S.-led pressure helped force Syrian troops to leave.

Its ally Hezbollah remains Lebanon’s main power broker and has fought alongside government forces in Syria’s civil war.

Hezbollah and its leading members made no immediate comment on Friday’s sentence.

(Reporting By Laila Bassam and Angus McDowall; editing by John Stonestreet)

Islamic State Profiting From Antiquities

Arranged antiquities are pictured in Damascus, Syria

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq are netting between $150 million and $200 million per year from illicit trade in plundered antiquities, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations said in a letter released on Wednesday.

“Around 100,000 cultural objects of global importance, including 4,500 archaeological sites, nine of which are included in the World Heritage List of … UNESCO, are under the control of the Islamic State … in Syria and Iraq,” Ambassador Vitaly Churkin wrote in a letter to the U.N. Security Council.

“The profit derived by the Islamists from the illicit trade in antiquities and archaeological treasures is estimated at U.S. $150-200 million per year,” he said.

The smuggling of artifacts, Churkin wrote, is organized by Islamic State’s antiquities division in the group’s equivalent of a ministry for natural resources. Only those who have a permit with a stamp from this division are permitted to excavate, remove and transport antiquities.

Some details of the group’s war spoils department were previously revealed by Reuters, which reviewed some of the documents seized by U.S. Special Operations Forces in a May 2015 raid in Syria.

But many details in Churkin’s letter appeared new.

The envoy from Russia, which has repeatedly accused Turkey of supporting Islamic State by purchasing oil from the group, said plundered antiquities were largely smuggled through Turkish territory.

“The main center for the smuggling of cultural heritage items is the Turkish city of Gaziantep, where the stolen goods are sold at illegal auctions and then through a network of antique shops and at the local market,” Churkin wrote.

Turkish officials were not immediately available for comment on the Russian allegations. Russian-Turkish relations have been strained ever since Turkey shot down a Russian plane near the Syrian border last November.

Churkin said jewelry, coins and other looted items are brought to the Turkish cities of Izmir, Mersin and Antalya, where criminal groups produce fake documents on their origin.

“The antiquities are then offered to collectors from various countries, generally through Internet auction sites such as eBay and specialized online stores,” he said. Churkin named several other Internet auction sites that he said sold antiquities plundered by Islamic State.

EBay did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

“Recently ISIL has been exploiting the potential of social media more and more frequently so as to cut out the middleman and sell artifacts directly to buyers,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Turkey illegally returned Syrians

A woman holding a child reacts as Turkish police and gendarmes block migrants on a highway

By Dasha Afanasieva and Tulay Karadeniz

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey has illegally returned thousands of Syrians to their war-torn homeland in recent months, highlighting dangers for migrants sent back from Europe under a deal due to take effect next week, Amnesty International said on Friday.

Turkey agreed with the EU this month to take back all migrants and refugees who cross illegally to Greece in exchange for financial aid, faster visa-free travel for Turks and slightly accelerated EU membership talks.

But the legality of the deal hinges on Turkey being a safe country of asylum, which the rights group said in a report was not the case. Amnesty said it was likely that several thousand refugees had been sent back to Syria in the past seven to nine weeks, flouting Turkish, EU and international law.

Turkey’s foreign ministry denied Syrians were being sent back against their will, while a spokesman for the European Commission said it took the allegations seriously and would raise them with Ankara.

Separately, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said it had asked for access to Syrians returned to Turkey from Greece “to ensure people can benefit from effective international protection and to prevent risk of refoulement”, referring to unlawful deportations of refugees at risk of persecution.

Ankara said it had maintained an open-door policy for Syrian migrants for five years and strictly abided by the “non-refoulement” principle.

“None of the Syrians that have demanded protection from our country are being sent back to their country by force,” a foreign ministry official told Reuters.

But Amnesty said testimonies it had gathered in Turkey’s southern border provinces suggested authorities had been rounding up and expelling groups of around 100 Syrian men, women and children almost daily since the middle of January.

“In their desperation to seal their borders, EU leaders have wilfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day,” said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s director for Europe and Central Asia.

Under the deal, Turkey is supposed to be taking in migrants returned from Greece on April 4, but uncertainty remains over how many will be sent back, how they will be processed, and where they will be housed.

The aim is to close the main route by which a million migrants and refugees crossed the Aegean Sea to Greece in the last year before heading north, mainly to Germany and Sweden.

(Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Nick Tattersall and John Stonestreet)

Lebanese military gets U.S., British aid for defending border with Syria

US Helicopters in Lebanon

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon’s armed forces acquired three U.S. helicopters worth $26 million on Thursday to help in efforts to stop Syria’s civil war spilling over its border, along with almost $29 million of British aid as EU countries also step up their support.

The Lebanese armed forces have now received a total of nine Huey II multi-mission helicopters from the United States as part of $1.3 billion in security assistance given since 2004, U.S. interim Ambassador Richard H. Jones said.

“We have no plans to slow down or alter that level of support,” Jones said at Beirut’s military air base.

Fighting between Islamic State and al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front militants often overlaps Lebanon’s mountainous northern border with Syria, where a civil war is now in its fifth year.

Fighters briefly overran the northern Lebanese town of Arsal in 2014 before withdrawing to the hills after clashes with the army. Fighting in the border area killed at least 32 Nusra and Islamic State fighters this week.

The helicopters will improve the army’s ability to quickly reinforce “remote areas of tension along the border in support of the army’s fight against terrorists”, Jones said.

Lebanon has a weak government and a number of nations support its armed forces, concerned that regional conflict and a power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia could again destabilise a country which emerged from its own civil war 26 years ago.

On a visit to Lebanon on Thursday, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond announced a further $22 million for border guard training through to 2019 and $6.5 million for general training of 5,000 Lebanese troops. “Lebanon is an important part of the front line against terrorism,” Hammond said.

“We are delighted by the way the UK support is being translated into strengthened border security and is enabling the armed forces to take the fight to Daesh and keep Lebanon safe from the incursions of Daesh,” he said, referring to Islamic State.

EU foreign policy head Federica Mogherini, who visited Lebanon last week, said that Lebanon’s security was important for Europe’s safety too and the EU was willing to expand its support for the Lebanese armed forces.

In February Saudi Arabia suspended a $3 billion aid package for the Lebanese army in what an official called a response to Beirut’s failure to condemn attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran.

Lebanon’s Iranian-backed group Hezbollah is also a significant military presence in the country, with extensive combat experience. It fought Israel in an inconclusive 2006 war and is supporting President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Issam Abdallah; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Syrian forces pursue campaign against Islamic State after retaking Palmyra

Mideast Crisis Syria

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian government forces backed by Russian air strikes battled Islamic State insurgents around Palmyra on Monday, trying to extend their gains after taking back control of a city whose ancient temples were dynamited by the ultra-radical militants.

The loss of Palmyra on Sunday is one of the biggest setbacks for the jihadist group since it declared a caliphate in 2014 across large parts of Syria and Iraq. It is also a major victory for President Bashar al-Assad and ally Russia, casting them as critical to the international fight against Islamic State.

The Syrian army said the city, home to some of the most extensive ruins of the Roman Empire, would become a “launchpad” for operations against Islamic State strongholds in Raqqa and Deir al-Zor, further east across a vast expanse of desert.

Syrian state media said on Monday Palmyra’s military airport was now open to air traffic after the army cleared the surrounding area of Islamic State fighters.

“Now there is a convergence of interests worldwide about the fact that ISIS (Islamic State) really needs to be confronted. It is a strategic defeat for ISIS and by default a strategic victory for Assad and Putin,” said Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East expert at the London School of Economics. “It feeds into Assad’s narrative about Syria being a bulwark against Islamic State.”

Clashes continued northeast of Palmyra between Islamic State and forces allied to the government, supported by Syrian and Russian air strikes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based body which monitors the war.

Air strikes, believed to be Russian, also targeted the road running east out of Palmyra towards Deir al-Zor, and there was fighting around the Islamic State-held town of Qaryatain on Monday, 100 km (60 miles) west of Palmyra, the Observatory said. The Syrian government has been trying to retake Qaryatain since Islamic State seized it last August.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, speaking in Amman, said he was “encouraged” that Syrian government forces had been able to drive Islamic State out of Palmyra and that the city’s ancient heritage could now be preserved.

But the Syrian opposition said it feared Assad’s forces were using a fragile cessation of hostilities in the wider conflict to make territorial gains.

“I fear one thing: that the period of the truce will allow the Assad regime to gobble up what remains of Syria by liberating areas that are controlled by Daesh (Islamic State) and Nusra,” Riad Nassan Agha, a member of the opposition High Negotiations Committee, told Reuters by telephone.

The truce, accepted by Assad’s government and most of his foes, is the first of its kind since the war began five years ago and has been accompanied by the first peace talks attended by the warring sides. It does not apply to areas held by Islamic State or the Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of al Qaeda.

NEGOTIATING POSITION

The Syrian government is likely to use its success in Palmyra to bolster its negotiating position at the peace talks in Geneva, underlining that it is a necessary partner in the fight against Islamic State.

The United States is leading an international campaign of air strikes against Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq. It says it does not cooperate with Assad’s government, but reported carrying out air strikes around Palmyra at least once last week while Damascus was making its advance.

Bashar Ja’afari, the Syrian envoy to the Geneva talks, said in an interview with Lebanon-based al-Mayadeen TV that it was time for powers including Washington to join Moscow in working with Damascus.

“We are for the creation of an international coalition against terrorism, but in coordination with the Syrian government,” he said. “We have no objection to working with America as long as it is done in coordination with Syria.”

Russia’s intervention in September turned the tide of Syria’s five-year conflict in Assad’s favor. Despite Moscow’s declared withdrawal of most military forces two weeks ago, Russian jets and helicopters carried out dozens of strikes daily over Palmyra as the army thrust into the city.

Russia said it would assist with securing and removing landmines in Palmyra following the campaign, and the Kremlin said on Monday that the Russian air force would continue to help Syrian government forces.

But Russian forces are still showing signs of their partial withdrawal. Three heavy attack helicopters have left Moscow’s Hmeimim air base in Syria for Russia, Russian state TV channel Rossiya-24 reported on Monday.

ISLAMIC STATE DEFEATS

Although most of the Islamic State force fled Palmyra on Sunday, there were still some militants in the city, the Observatory said. Its director Rami Abdulrahman said most residents had fled before the government offensive and the observatory had not heard about any civilian deaths.

He said 417 Islamic State fighters were so far known to have died in the campaign to retake Palmyra, while 194 people were killed on the Syrian government side. The figures could not be independently verified.

Islamic State militants dynamited several monuments last year, and Syrian television broadcast footage from inside Palmyra museum on Sunday showing toppled and damaged statues, as well as several smashed display cases.

Syria’s antiquities chief said other ancient landmarks were still standing and pledged to restore the damaged monuments.

“Palmyra has been liberated. This is the end of the destruction in Palmyra,” Mamoun Abdelkarim told Reuters on Sunday. “How many times did we cry for Palmyra? How many times did we feel despair? But we did not lose hope.”

Islamic State’s ejection from Palmyra came three months after it was driven from Ramadi, a provincial capital in neighboring Iraq. Islamic State has also lost ground elsewhere, including the Iraqi city of Tikrit last year and the Syrian town of al-Shadadi in February, as its enemies try to cut links between its two main power centers, Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.

On Friday the United States said it believed it had killed several senior Islamic State militants, including Abd ar-Rahman al-Qaduli, described as the group’s top finance official and aide to leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

(Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow; Editing by Nick Tattersall, Mark Heinrich and Peter Graff)

Syrian government forces enter Islamic State-held Palmyra

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian government forces fought their way into Palmyra on Thursday as the army backed by Russian air cover sought to recapture the historic city from Islamic State (IS) insurgents, Syrian state TV and a monitoring group said.

The Syrian army earlier this month launched a concerted offensive to retake Palmyra, which the ultra-hardline Islamist militants seized in May 2015, to open a road to the mostly IS-held eastern province of Deir al-Zor.

Islamic State has blown up ancient temples and tombs since capturing Palmyra, something the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO has called a war crime. The city, located at a crossroads in central Syria, is surrounded mostly by desert.

The state-run news channel Ikhbariya broadcast images from just outside Palmyra on Thursday and said government fighters had taken over a hotel district in the west.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the army had advanced into the hotel district just to the southwest of the city and reached the start of a residential area, after a rapid advance the day before brought the army and its allies right up to its outskirts.

A soldier interviewed by Ikhbariya said the army and its allies would press forward beyond Palmyra.

“We say to those gunmen, we are advancing to Palmyra, and to what’s beyond Palmyra, and God willing to Raqqa, the center of the Daesh gangs,” he said, referring to Islamic State’s de facto capital in northern Syria.

The state news agency SANA showed warplanes flying overhead, helicopters firing missiles, and soldiers and armored vehicles approaching Palmyra.

Civilians began fleeing after Islamic State fighters told them via loudspeakers to leave the center as fighting drew closer, the Observatory said. The Observatory monitors the war using a network of sources on the ground.

The capture of Palmyra and advances further eastwards into Deir al-Zor would mark the most significant Syrian government gain against Islamic State since the start of Russia’s military intervention last September.

With Russia’s help, Damascus has already taken back some ground from IS, notably east of Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city and commercial hub before the war.

(Reporting by John Davison, Dominic Evans and Lisa Barrington; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Syria sees impasse broken as EU urges engagement in peace talks

GENEVA (Reuters) – The head of Syria’s delegation in Geneva said EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini had urged his government to engage positively in peace talks on Wednesday, and he believed the round of talks had broken the diplomatic impasse.

Mogherini arrived unexpectedly in Geneva on Wednesday, possibly highlighting concerns that talks on Syria risk getting deadlocked unless headway on the matter of political transition is made soon.

“She passed on a letter of support for the Syrian-Syrian dialogue,” Bashar Ja’afari told reporters. “She came to support us to engage positively in the talks that would lead to an end to the Syrian crisis,” he said after the rare meeting with a senior Western official.

Mogherini earlier held talks with the chief coordinator for the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC), Riad Hijab.

Ja’afari told her he wanted the European Union to reopen its embassies and lift sanctions on Damascus, but said that while his team would return for a second round of talks in Geneva, he had told U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura they could not come back before Syrian elections on April 13.

Activists and diplomats said de Mistura was finalizing a document for delegates at peace talks that will synthesize common points of convergence, but is likely to stay clear of the divisive issue of political transition.

With a fragile truce in place in Syria, warring sides are more than a week into talks on ending the conflict, but government officials have rejected any discussion on a political transition or the fate of President Bashar al-Assad, who opposition leaders say must go as part of any such plan.

Speaking before the negotiations adjourn on Thursday, Ja’afari said he had received a document from envoy Staffan de Mistura.

“We will respond to it at the beginning of the next round,” he said, declining to take any questions.

The five-year-old conflict between the government and insurgents has killed more than 250,000 people, allowed Islamic State to take control of some eastern areas and caused the world’s worst refugee crisis.

The U.N. envoy said on Tuesday that he aimed to establish if there were any points held in common by the different parties. If successful, he would announce these on Thursday.

Randa Kassis, who heads up a Moscow-backed opposition group, said de Mistura would distribute a document of common points gathered from the various delegates.

Points included creating a future unified Syrian army to fight terrorism or ensuring a democratic and non-sectarian based Syria.

“I don’t think much has happened in this round,” Kassis told Reuters. “We’re waiting for a U.S.-Russian accord to solve the (key) issue once and for all. Until they resolve it this process will drag on.”

Jihad Makdissi, head of the Cairo opposition group, confirmed he was also expecting de Mistura to issue a paper on a potential “common vision” for Syria that he believed was on the right path.

“It covers many points important to the Riyadh platform, the Cairo platform, and the Moscow platforms,” he said, referring to the different opposition groups.

A Western diplomat said he believed de Mistura’s new document was an attempt to synthesize views he had heard from his various interlocutors during the round of talks.

The cessation of hostilities deal, engineered by Washington and Moscow three weeks ago, but not signed by any of the warring parties, remains fragile.

Asaad al-Zoubi, head of the HNC’s delegation, said on Tuesday it was “obvious” there were no points of convergence with the Syrian government and accused it of renewing sieges and barrel bombing campaigns against civilians.

Mogherini’s visit coincides with high-level meetings in Moscow between Russian and U.S. officials.

They aim to give fresh impetus to the talks and assess how Russia envisages a political transition in Syria, in particular the fate of Assad.

(Additional reporting By John Irish and Stephanie Nebehay; Writing by John Irish; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky/Ruth Pitchford)

Syrian refugees denied critical healthcare in Jordan, Amnesty says

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Syrian refugees in Jordan are finding it very difficult to get medical care because of Jordanian fees and bureaucracy, and shrinking humanitarian financial support, rights group Amnesty International said on Wednesday.

Many refugees cannot afford the fees for medical care imposed by the Jordanian government in 2014, and some, injured in the Syrian conflict, have died after being turned away at the border, Amnesty said in a report.

There are 630,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan registered with the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR), the vast majority of them living in poverty outside the refugee camps, Amnesty said.

“Lengthy bureaucratic procedures and additional health care fees pose huge obstacles to those of them requiring medical treatment,” Sherif Elsayed-Ali, head of refugee and migrants’ rights at Amnesty International, said in a statement.

“The user fees imposed by Jordan may not appear to be high but are unaffordable for most refugees who are struggling to feed their families, and leave many unable to access the critical care they need.”

Refugees who have left the camps unofficially or re-entered Jordan after going back to Syria are not eligible to receive documents required by the Jordanian authorities to obtain public services, including healthcare, it said.

Falling humanitarian support has contributed to the problem, as only 26 percent of Jordan’s funding requirements for health had been met at the end of 2015, Amnesty said.

Some refugees with critical injuries have been denied access, despite a provision allowing entry for those with war-related injuries, since Jordan imposed restrictions in 2012 on Syrians trying to cross the border, Amnesty said.

The main reasons for refusal of entry were lack of identity documents (ID) or the injuries not being life-threatening, it said.

In July, 14 injured people, among them five children with shrapnel wounds, were prevented from entering Jordan and four of them died while waiting at the border, Amnesty said.

“To not even allow entry to people who are fleeing a conflict zone with serious injuries because they don’t have ID papers shows a chilling lack of compassion and appalling disregard for their rights to health and life,” Elsayed-Ali said.

Some 58 percent of Syrians with chronic conditions lacked access to medicines or other health services, Amnesty said, citing UNHCR figures.

“Greater international support in the form of more resettlement places for refugees and financial assistance would make a world of difference by enabling the Jordanian authorities to strengthen the health system and remove barriers that are preventing Syrian refugees from accessing crucial health care,” Elsayed-Ali said.

The Jordanian government was not immediately available to comment.

(Reporting by Magdalena Mis, editing by Tim Pearce. Please credit Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

United States to press Russia on future of Syria’s Assad

MOSCOW/GENEVA (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to press President Vladimir Putin on how Russia sees a future political transition in Syria and the fate of President Bashar al-Assad.

With a fragile truce in place in Syria and warring sides attending peace talks in Geneva, Kerry wants to “get down to brass tacks” on the question of Assad’s future, a State Department official said.

While the United States want Assad to step aside, Russia says only the Syrian people can decide his fate at the ballot box and has bristled at any talk of regime change.

Kerry is holding talks with Putin at the Kremlin on Thursday, in a meeting arranged after the Russian leader’s surprise announcement on March 14 that he was partially withdrawing his forces from Syria.

“The Secretary would like to now really hear where President Putin is in his thinking … on a political transition” in Syria, the official said as Kerry arrived in Moscow.

“Obviously what we are looking for, and what we have been looking for, is how we are going to transition Syria away from Assad’s leadership,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

After five years of conflict that has killed over 250,000 people and caused the world’s worst refugee crisis, Washington and Moscow reached a deal three weeks ago for a cessation of hostilities and delivery of humanitarian aid to besieged areas.

The State Department official said meetings with Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov would evaluate the status of the ceasefire and try to “get on the same page” about ending violations and increasing humanitarian assistance.

UNILATERAL THREAT

Russia this week threatened to act unilaterally against those who violate the ceasefire unless it reached a deal with the United States on ways to detect and prevent truce breaches.

The Syrian opposition has accused government forces of renewing sieges and stepping up a campaign of barrel-bombing across the country.

In Geneva, where warring sides are a week into talks on ending the conflict, government officials have rejected any discussion on the fate of Assad, who opposition leaders say must go as part of any transition.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Syria peace talks were always going to be long and difficult, and it was too early to talk about patience running out on any side.

U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said on Tuesday he hoped the U.S-Russia meeting would give an impetus to the peace talks where the divisive issue of a political transition is stalling progress.

But the State Department official played down expectations that the meeting would have an immediate impact on the talks, which adjourn on Thursday with the next round expected in early April.

A Syrian activist at the talks, Jihad Makdissi, said de Mistura was planning to issue a paper on a “potential common vision”.

The Syrian government delegation said the U.N. envoy had handed them a document which they would study on their return to Damascus. No details of either paper were disclosed.

However, the United Nations said the Syrian government had given verbal assurances that aid convoys can go into three or four areas that its forces are besieging.

U.N. humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said the United Nations had been allowed to enter eight or nine of the 11 areas it had asked to supply with aid, including three or four besieged areas.

But it had not been allowed to go into the town of Daraya, where the World Food Programme has said some people have been reduced to eating grass.

PALMYRA OFFENSIVE

On the battlefield, Syrian government forces and their allies were reported to have pushed forward against Islamic State fighters to reach the outskirts of the historic city of Palmyra on Wednesday.

State news agency SANA quoted a military source who said the army and allied militia advanced in the hills outside Palmyra and toward a road junction “after eliminating the last terrorist Daesh groups there”, referring to Islamic State fighters. Islamic State is not covered by the truce agreement.

The Syrian army is trying to recapture Palmyra, which Islamic State seized in May, to open a road to the mostly IS-held eastern province of Deir al-Zor.

Clashes raged around Palmyra after government forces took control of most of a nearby hill with air cover from Syrian and Russian warplanes, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Russia has withdrawn around half of its air force in Syria, according to Reuters calculations based on state TV footage, some of which was not broadcast.

But Moscow has maintained a group of Su-24 bombers at its Latakia air base and deployed a number of advanced attack helicopters, meaning it is able to continue a reduced number of air strikes in the country.

Operating from Russia’s Shayrat air base southeast of Homs, the helicopter force will be used to secure territory gains around Aleppo and support the Syrian army offensive against Islamic State in Palmyra, Western officials said.

(Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov, Jack Stubbs, John Davison, Dominic Evans, Stephanie Nebehay and Tom Miles; Writing by Giles Elgood, editing by Peter Millership)

Syrian government refuses to discuss Assad’s future

GENEVA/BEIRUT (Reuters) – The fate of President Bashar al-Assad will play no part in talks to end the Syrian war, the head of the government’s delegation said, leading the U.N. peace envoy to warn that lack of progress on the issue could threaten a fragile cessation of hostilities.

Damascus delegate Bashar Ja’afari said Assad’s future had “nothing to do” with the negotiations, which entered their second week on Monday, insisting that counter-terrorism efforts remained the priority for the government.

“The (terms of) reference of our talks do not give any indication whatsoever with regard to the issue of the President of the Syrian Arab Republic,” he said when asked about the willingness of the government delegation to engage in serious talks on political transition.

“This is something already excluded.”

U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura – who describes Syria’s political transition as “the mother of all issues” – responded by saying the government delegation’s refusal to discuss it could lead to a deterioration of the situation on the ground.

“Everyone more or less agrees, the cessation of hostilities is still holding,” he said. “The same … more or less for the movement on humanitarian aid. But neither of them can be sustained if we don’t get progress on the political transition.”

The fragility of the three-week-old cessation, which was backed by the United States and Russia, was highlighted on Monday when Moscow said it had recorded six violations in the last 24 hours.

The Syrian opposition accused the government delegation of wasting time by refusing to discuss the future of Assad. “It is not possible to wait like this, while the regime delegation wastes time without achieving anything,” said Salim al-Muslat, spokesman for the opposition High Negotiations Committee.

DESERT CITY

Arguments over Assad’s fate were a major cause of the failure of previous U.N. peace efforts in 2012 and 2014 to end a civil war that has killed more than 250,000 people and caused a refugee crisis.

The five-year-old conflict between the government and insurgents has also allowed Islamic State to take advantage of the chaos and take control of areas in the east of the country.

Fighters from the jihadist group – which is excluded from the ceasefire deal – killed 26 Syrian soldiers on Monday west of Palmyra, a monitoring group said, after days of advances by government forces backed by Syrian and Russian air cover.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that the Syrian army would soon recapture Palmyra from Islamic State, which has held the desert city for nearly a year.

Palmyra has both symbolic and military value as the site of ancient Roman-era ruins – mostly destroyed by Islamic State – and because of its location on a highway linking mainly government-held western Syria to Islamic State’s eastern stronghold.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting took place about 4 km (2 miles) west of Palmyra.

It was not possible to independently verify the death toll. Syria’s state news agency SANA said the army and allied forces, backed by the Syrian air force, carried out “concentrated operations” against Islamic State around Palmyra and the Islamic State-held town of al-Qaryatayn, about 100 km further west.

After more than five months of air strikes in support of Assad, which turned the course of the civil war in the government’s favour, Putin announced the withdrawal last week of most Russian forces. But Russian planes have continued to support army operations near Palmyra, according to the Observatory and regional media.

(Additional reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi, Stephanie Nebehay and Ali Abdelatti; Writing by Pravin Char; editing by John Stonestreet)