UN chief hopes for peace in Syria ahead of Arab Summit

Feng Xue
By Feng Xue
March 28, 2017World News
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U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said he hoped the recently resumed peace talks in Geneva would be an important step toward a comprehensive solution to the 6-year-old crisis in Syria on Tuesday, March 28.

Before making these remarks, Guterres visited the Zaatari camp for Syrian refugees in Jordan.

The camp holds 80,000 people who have fled from their war-torn homeland.

Guterres was in Jordan ahead of tomorrow’s start of the annual Arab Summit.

The Geneva peace talks resumed on March 23 after a 10-month hiatus. Guterres still has not gotten the opposing sides to sit down for face-to-face discussion.

With the forces of President Bashar al-Assad seeing success, it seems less likely than ever that a deal will be struck.

In January U.S. President Donald Trump promised to set up Safe Zones in Syria where displaced persons could live within their nation’s borders when fighting swept over their home towns and villages.

So far Trump has not announced what a Safe Zone would be, or where, or how it would be kept safe.

Guterres said that if such “zones of stability” were ever established, care would need to be taken so that they did not become prisons.

More than 1 million people, a sixth of Syria’s population, have fled from the fighting, which has ravaged the nation for the past six years.

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