Terms of Syrian aid offer unacceptable – UN
The United Nations has described as “unacceptable” the conditions placed by Syria in an offer to allow aid to keep reaching rebel-held territory.
Syria’s ambassador to the UN said on Thursday his government would let aid continue entering the country via the Bab al-Hawa crossing from Turkey.
Members of the UN Security Council had earlier failed to reach an agreement to keep the border crossing open.
Some 4.1 million people in north-west Syria depend on the aid deliveries.
In a letter to the UN secretary general, Syrian ambassador Bassam Sabbagh said Damascus had made a “sovereign decision” to let aid cross through Bab al-Hawa for the next six months.
It would allow deliveries to resume “in full co-operation and co-ordination with the Syrian government”, he said.
But in a document sent to the Security Council and seen by the AFP and Reuters news agencies, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the proposal “contains two unacceptable conditions”.
It said that, first, the Syrian government had “stressed that the United Nations should not communicate with entities designated as ‘terrorist'”.
Since the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011, President Bashar al-Assad has frequently described any rebel groups or opponents of his regime as terrorists.
The OCHA also said Damascus also wanted the distribution of all aid in northwest Syria to be supervised and facilitated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC). —BBC
