Press stakeout by UN Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura

SdeM: Good afternoon. We had a useful ninth meeting in Astana with some concrete discussions on de-escalation. As you know de-escalation is the priority of Astana, and our priority too, especially on the major pending issue, which is still pending, but requires a lot of homework, the issue of Idlib, as you know.

The issue of Syrian territorial integrity, national unity was clearly stressed by everyone.
Third point, I have got five points, in particular, the UN participated very actively in a working group where the Guarantors had constructive engagement, which was very much supported by us, on issues of detainees, abductees and missing people.

We are looking forward very much to see more discussions of this working group in Ankara soon, on the pressing humanitarian issue of detainees, abductees and disappeared people, which is affecting so many thousands of Syrian families.

Fourth point, we welcome the intention of the Astana Guarantors to actively and regularly engage with the UN in Geneva, in order to see a concrete follow-up to the Sochi declaration on the establishment of a Constitutional Commission and we do look forward do so also with other interested countries and parties.

Last but not least, we thank like everyone has done, his Excellency President Nazarbayev for hosting generously this ninth session of the Astana de-escalation process.

Thank you very much.


Astana, 15 May 2018