The Syria government and the opposition discussed the security situation on the ground on the sixth day of ongoing peace talks, as their respective delegations participated in the joint meeting Thursday here, UN-Arab League Special Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi said.
The two sides had a “very long meeting” this morning, Xinhua quoted the international negotiator of the ongoing talks as saying during a press conference late afternoon.
According to sources from the UN Information Service of Geneva, there were no meetings held this afternoon.
“We had another very long meeting this morning where we discussed very sensitive and important subject, that is the security situation in Syria and terrorism,” said Brahimi.
The special envoy noted that there was an agreement that terrorism does exist and “it is a very serious problem inside Syria”, but no consensus had been achieved regarding how to deal with it.
The meeting witnessed its “tense moments” and “rather promising moments”, Brahimi said.
He also mentioned that during the session this morning, all parties observed a minute of silence for all the dead in Syria “irrelevant of to which camp they belong.”
The latest round of Syria talks would conclude Friday morning, as originally planned, according to Brahimi, who hoped that in the meeting to be held Friday, all parties would “draw some lessons” and try to better prepare for the next round of talks which was said to resume “most probably after about one week”.
Representatives of the two parties have held discussions within the framework of Geneva Communique which was adopted after Geneva I, the first international conference on Syria held here in 2012.
The two sides, however, were at odds in regard to the order of discussion of issues. The government side insisted that stopping terrorism was their top priority, while the opposition tried to focus on establishment of a transitional governing body.