GENEVA: US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were meeting in Geneva on Friday for an expected push towards resuming peace talks for war-ravaged Syria.

They were briefly joined by the UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, who had said on Thursday the talks would be “important”, and could help his drive to revive the stalled negotiations.

Asked during a break how the meeting was proceeding, Lavrov responded: “Excellent”.

De Mistura had voiced hope of bringing the warring parties back to the negotiating table by the end of August, but that deadline looks sure to slip in the face of intense fighting on the ground.

Successive rounds of international negotiations have failed to end a conflict that has killed more than 290,000 people and forced millions from their homes in more than five years.

Moscow and Washington support opposite sides in the war, which erupted in March 2011 after President Bashar al-Assad unleashed a brutal crackdown against a pro-democracy revolt. Friday’s meeting came as the conflict became further complicated by Ankara’s decision this week to send tanks into Syria to back rebel fighters.

The Turkish-backed fighters have seized the Syrian border town of Jarabulus from the militant Islamic State (IS) group, while Turkish forces have also shelled a US-backed Syrian Kurdish militia.

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2016

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