(MENAFN- The Peninsula) The UN peace envoy for Syria plans to present new proposals at the end of July on the next steps needed in efforts to end the war, the UN spokesman said late on Friday.
Staffan de Mistura briefed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and several ambassadors about his new peace plan during week-long talks at UN headquarters in New York.
"The special envoy intends to finalize by the end of July his proposals to the secretary-general on a way forward to support Syrian parties in their search of a political solution to the conflict," the spokesman said.
De Mistura will brief the Security Council on July 28. The Swedish-Italian diplomat has been holding meetings in Geneva over the past two months with key players in the Syria conflict to try to advance peace prospects.
The Geneva consultations were launched after De Mistura's plan for a freeze in fighting in the city of Aleppo failed. There have been no peace talks on Syria since the so-called Geneva II meetings in early 2014 ended in failure.
The search for a solution to end the war, now in its fifth year, has been complicated by divisions within the Security Council. Syrian ally Russia, backed by China, has vetoed resolutions targeting the Damascus regime.
More than 230,000 people have died in the conflict and almost half of the country's population has been driven from their homes.
De Mistura, an Italian-Swedish diplomat, was appointed last July to take over what many termed a "mission impossible" to bring peace to Syria, after two top-notch diplomats, Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi, resigned after failing at the same task.
Meanwhile, Syria's regime killed at least 28 people, mostly civilians, yesterday when its warplanes dropped massive makeshift bombs on a town held by the Islamic State group, a monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the bombs used in the attacks on Al Bab, in the northern province of Aleppo, were three times more destructive than so-called barrel bombs, which have already drawn widespread international condemnation.
"The army used 'container bombs' which are three times more powerful than 'barrel bombs'," said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.
Among those killed in the bombardment were "19 civilians, including three children and three women," said the Observatory, a Britain-based group that relies on a range of sources on the ground for its reports.
The bodies of the nine other people killed in the attacks were too charred to be identified, said Abdel Rahman.
The Local Coordination Committees activist network said the air strikes targeted a popular market. President Bashar Al Assad's air force has frequently bombarded Al Bab, but the US-led anti-IS coalition has also targeted jihadists in the town that has been held by the Sunni extremist group since early 2014.
The Syrian government forces have been repeatedly accused of indiscriminantly using barrel bombs on civilian areas. The regime denies deploying the weapons.
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