(MENAFN- Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) United Nations Secretary-General's Special Envoy on Syria will start on Tuesday in-depth separate consultations with Syrian stakeholders and regional and international actors to take stock of their views on reopening peace talks based on the 2012 so-called Geneva CommuniquØ£©.
Staffan de Mistura will kick off five to six weeks of separate consultations with different sides, including both government and opposition representatives, in war-torn Syria in a bid to kick start stalled negotiations to end the four-year conflict.
Terror-listed entities as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Al-Nusra Front have not been invited to the talks, but groups in contact with them were on the list.
Iran, which backs the regime leader Bashar Al-Assad, which has been excluded from two rounds of previous Syria negotiations in Switzerland, has been invited to take part.
These aim to take stock of the various sides' positions to allow de Mistura to stake the best way forward.
It remains unclear whether de Mistura will have more success than his predecessors former UN chief Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi in ending the conflict that has killed more than 220,000 people since March 2011.
De Mistura is the third special envoy to tackle this intractable conflict, he faces an even more daunting task than his predecessors in his reach for a political solution.
As Syria enters its fifth year of war, international agencies report more
than 220,000 people have been killed and more than half the country's population of 22 million is displaced both within and outside the country.
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