ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The United Nation’s special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, announced he will be stepping down next month.
“I will myself be moving as of the last week of November,” he told the UN Security Council during a meeting on the Syrian conflict on Wednesday.
He said he was leaving for personal reasons after four years in the position and vowed he would not let up on efforts to find a political solution to the Syrian conflict.
“I am not laying down the charge until the last hour of the last day of my mandate,” he said.
His most recent effort was putting together a constitutional committee composed of Syrian government officials, opposition members, and representatives of civil society.
The UN’s Geneva process has however been sidelined by Russian efforts in Astana and Sochi.
De Mistura is the third UN envoy for Syria.
Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the peace process “mission impossible” when he resigned in August 2012after six months in the post.
“At a time when we need – when the Syrian people desperately need – action there continues to be finger-pointing and name-calling in the security council,” he said in frustration.
Lakhdar Brahimi, an Algerian diplomat, took up the challenge next, but stepped down after two years.
Both the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the opposition believed they could militarily win the war and the rest of the world made mistakes in how they reacted to the conflict from the very beginning, Brahimi told Spiegel in an interview after he stepped down in 2014.
“It is complicated and these events erupted on us when we weren’t looking. What is difficult to understand is that the early, mistaken assumptions have not been revised. On all sides, people still help the war effort instead of the peace effort, and it is making things worse,” he said.
More than 360,000 people have died in the over seven years of conflict.
“I will myself be moving as of the last week of November,” he told the UN Security Council during a meeting on the Syrian conflict on Wednesday.
He said he was leaving for personal reasons after four years in the position and vowed he would not let up on efforts to find a political solution to the Syrian conflict.
“I am not laying down the charge until the last hour of the last day of my mandate,” he said.
His most recent effort was putting together a constitutional committee composed of Syrian government officials, opposition members, and representatives of civil society.
The UN’s Geneva process has however been sidelined by Russian efforts in Astana and Sochi.
De Mistura is the third UN envoy for Syria.
Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the peace process “mission impossible” when he resigned in August 2012after six months in the post.
“At a time when we need – when the Syrian people desperately need – action there continues to be finger-pointing and name-calling in the security council,” he said in frustration.
Lakhdar Brahimi, an Algerian diplomat, took up the challenge next, but stepped down after two years.
Both the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the opposition believed they could militarily win the war and the rest of the world made mistakes in how they reacted to the conflict from the very beginning, Brahimi told Spiegel in an interview after he stepped down in 2014.
“It is complicated and these events erupted on us when we weren’t looking. What is difficult to understand is that the early, mistaken assumptions have not been revised. On all sides, people still help the war effort instead of the peace effort, and it is making things worse,” he said.
More than 360,000 people have died in the over seven years of conflict.
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