UN Security Council votes in favour of Russian-Turkish peace plan for Syria

The resolution aims to pave the way for the new talks under the aegis of key Syria government backers Russia and Iran, and of Turkey, which backs rebel groups.

The resolution approved Saturday afternoon also calls for the “rapid, safe and unhindered” delivery of humanitarian aid throughout Syria.

And it anticipates a meeting of the Syrian government and opposition representative in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana in late January.

The resolution’s final text dropped an endorsement of the Syria cease-fire agreement reached Thursday, as Western members of the council sought changes to the circulated draft resolution to clarify the UN’s role and the meaning of the agreement brokered by Moscow and Ankara.

Meanwhile on the ground in Syria, rebels warned on Saturday that cease-fire violations by pro-government forces threatened to undermine a two-day-old agreement intended to pave the way for talks between the government and the opposition in the new year.

Airstrikes pounded opposition-held villages and towns in the strategically-important Barada Valley outside Damascus, activists said, prompting rebels to threaten to withdraw their compliance with a nationwide truce brokered by Russia and Turkey last week.

Rebels also accused the government of signing a different version of the agreement to the one they signed in the Turkish capital of Ankara, further complicating the latest diplomatic efforts to bring an end to six years of war.

Nearly 50,000 people died in the conflict in 2016, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which maintains networks of contacts on all sides of the war. More than 13,000 of them were civilians, according to the Observatory. Various estimates have put the war’s overall toll at around 400,000 dead.

If the truce holds, the government and the opposition will be expected to meet for talks for the first time in nearly a year in the Kazakh capital of Astana in the second half of January. Those talks will be mediated by Russia, Turkey, and Iran.

Iran and Russia have provided crucial military and diplomatic support to Syrian President Bashar Assad throughout the conflict, while Turkey has served as a rear base and source of supplies for the opposition.