HTS So Far 'sending Good Messages' To Syrians: UN Envoy
Mohammad Ali (@ChaudhryMAli88) Published December 10, 2024 | 04:10 PM
Geneva, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Dec, 2024) The armed groups that have swept Syrian president Bashar al-Assad from power must transform their "good messages" to Syrians into actions on the ground, the UN envoy for Syria said Tuesday.
After more than 13 years of civil war in Syria, the government's collapse came in a matter of days in a lightning offensive by the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by Ahmed al-Sharaa.
"The realities so far is that the HTS and also the other armed groups have been sending good messages to the Syrian people," United Nations special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen told reporters in Geneva.
"They have been sending messages of unity, of inclusiveness," he said, adding that "we have also seen.
.. reassuring things on the ground".
But "what we need not to see is of course that the good statements and what we are seeing on the ground at the beginning, that this is not followed up in practice in the days and the weeks ahead of us".
Pedersen, a Norwegian diplomat who took over as UN envoy for Syria in 2018, said "the most important test will be how the transitional arrangements in Damascus is organised and implemented".
"These arrangement, as I have emphasised many times, needs to be inclusive."
His comments came after Assad fled Syria as the opposition alliance swept into the capital Damascus, bringing a spectacular end on Sunday to five decades of brutal rule by his clan.
