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 The government said women and children could leave Homs and
government and opposition delegates also spoke of releasing
prisoners.
The U.N. mediator said he hoped talks, which continue on Monday in
Geneva, could move on to broaching the central issue that divides
the two sides after three years of civil war — Syria's political
future and that of President Bashar al-Assad.
Homs, occupying a strategic location in the centre of the country,
has been a key battleground. Assad's forces retook many of the
surrounding areas last year, leaving rebels under siege in the city
centre, along with thousands of civilians.
Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told a news conference
on Sunday that the government would let women and children leave the
city centre if rebels gave them safe passage. U.N. mediator Lakhdar
Brahimi said he understood that they would be free to quit Homs
immediately.
Mekdad said: "If the armed terrorists in Homs allow women and
children to leave the old city of Homs, we will allow them every
access. Not only that, we will provide them with shelter, medicines
and all that is needed.
"We are ready to allow any humanitarian aid to enter into the city
through the ... arrangements made with the U.N."
Western diplomats said the Syrian government should move quickly to
allow this to happen or face a possible United Nations Security
Council resolution, with Russia and China being urged to reverse
their opposition to such a move.
"The ball is still in the regime's court. We understand that a
report has gone back to Damascus seeking instructions," one diplomat
said.
BLOCKADE
In Homs itself, however, opposition activists said rebels demanded a
complete end to the blockade, not just a limited ceasefire. An
online video showed demonstrators with Islamist flags denouncing the
Geneva talks as "treachery".
Brahimi, who presided on Saturday over the first direct meeting
between the two delegations, was expected to hold a another joint
session on Monday to begin discussion of a U.N. plan for a
transitional government.
Acknowledging the slow start to proceedings which began with a
formal international conference on Wednesday, Brahimi said: "This is
a political negotiation ... Our negotiation is not the main place
where humanitarian issues are discussed.
"But I think we all felt ... that you cannot start a negotiation
about Syria without having some discussion about the very, very bad
humanitarian situation that exists."
There was little sign of a softening of positions on the core issue — whether or not Assad should quit now, as the opposition and their
Western and Arab backers say was agreed by a U.N. conference at
Geneva 18 months ago.
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"The president of the Syrian Arab Republic stays until the Syrian
people says something else," said Mekdad, repeating the government
position that Assad can stay and win an election.
For the opposition, spokesman Louay Safi said Monday's session with
Brahimi would show if the government was willing to negotiate:
"Tomorrow we start talking about transition from dictatorship to
democracy. The regime is ... stalling."
PRISONERS
Brahimi said opposition delegates, who have asked for the release of
nearly 50,000 detainees, had agreed to a government request to try
to provide a list of those held by armed rebel groups — though many
of these groups, fighting among themselves, do not recognize the
negotiators' authority.
Mekdad said the government had examined an opposition list of 47,000
people believed to have been arrested by Assad's forces and found
most had either never been held or were now free. He also denied
that any children were being held.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose government has helped
Assad resist Western pressure but backs a negotiated peace to
prevent the conflict spreading, called for progress on aid,
unblocking besieged areas and prisoner exchanges.
Underlining the difficulty of implementing even local agreements on
the ground, a U.N. agency trying to deliver aid to a besieged rebel
area of Damascus said state checkpoints had hampered its work,
despite assurances from the government that it would allow the
distributions.
Profound mutual mistrust and the absence from Geneva of powerful
Islamist opposition groups make any substantial progress very
difficult, and previous aid deals and ceasefires in Syria have
proved short-lived.
(Additional reporting by Erika Solomon, Mariam Karouny, Dominic
Evans, William James and Steve Gutterman; writing by David Stamp and Alastair Macdonald;
editing by Giles Elgood)
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