In Cairo, Ban urges parties to Gaza conflict to end "cycle of building and destroying"

UN, 12 October 2014 – On the next stop of his tour of North Africa, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Egypt today at a conference on the reconstruction of Gaza urged all parties to last summer's war to address the root causes of the protracted conflict to prevent the “cycle of building and destroying” from becoming a ritual. “We are here to stand with the people of Gaza who have endured a terrible summer of suffering,” said Mr. Ban in his remarks to the Cairo Conference on Gaza attended by the President of the State of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, and several foreign ministers including of Egypt, and Norway.

Poroshenko and militia leaders order to cease fire in Ukraine

The press service of the President of Ukraine said that Petro Poroshenko ordered the Chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to cease fire starting from 18:00 local time (19:00 MSK), on September 5.

"Based on the appeal from Russian President Vladimir Putin to the leaders of illegal armed formations in the Donbass to cease fire, on the base of the protocol signed at the meeting of the trilateral contact group to implement the peace plan of the President of Ukraine, I herewith order the Chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to cease fire starting from 18:00 on September 5," said Poroshenko.

Women, children allowed to leave besieged Syria city Homs

Women and children trapped in a besieged Syrian city will be permitted to leave “immediately” under a deal that marked the first tangible sign of progress in peace talks.
“What we have been told by the [Syria] government side is that women and children in the besieged area of the [Homs] old city are welcome to leave immediately,” Agence France-Presse quoted U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi as telling a news conference after talks with government and opposition delegations.
“Hopefully starting tomorrow, women and children will be able to leave the Old City in Homs,” Brahimi said.
The subject of Homs -- where hundreds of families in the Old City are living under siege with near-daily shelling and the barest of supplies -- has been discussed at length since the two parties started face-to-face talks on Saturday.

Syrian regime and opposition agree to direct talks

Delegations representing the Syrian regime opposition have agreed to meet in the same room for direct talks on Saturday, UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said Friday.

"I met the delegations of the opposition and the government separately yesterday and again today and tomorrow we expect, we have agreed, that we will meet in the same room," Brahimi told journalists.

The meeting would start at the United Nations in Geneva at 10am (0900 GMT), he said.
A first face-to-face meeting between the two warring sides since the Syrian conflict broke out almost three years ago had been due to take place Friday as part of the ongoing Geneva 2 peace talks.
But attempts to bring the government and opposition delegations together initially stumbled, prompting Brahimi to speak to both sides separately in an effort to bring them both to the negotiating table.

Syrian peace talks stuck over Assad's future

MONTREUX (Switzerland): Peace talks intended to carve a path out of Syria's civil war got off to a rocky start on Wednesday as a bitter clash over President Bashar Assad's future threatened to collapse the negotiations even before they really begin.

The dispute over Assad cast a pall over the start of an international peace conference that aims to map out a transitional government and ultimately a democratic election for the war-torn Middle East nation.

While diplomats sparred against a pristine Alpine backdrop, Syrian forces and opposition fighters clashed across a wide area from Aleppo and Idlib in the north to Daraa in the south, where the uprising against Assad began three years ago, activists and state media said.

US calls Ya'alon's comments about Kerry 'offensive'; Netanyahu does damage control

State Dept. issues rebuke after Ya'alon reportedly calls Kerry "messianic, delusional"; PM says "Even when we have disagreements with the US, they are always on the heart of the matter, not on the merits of an individual."
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu did damage control on the Israel-US relationship in his speech in honor of the Knesset's 65th birthday, following Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon's comments about US Secretary of State John Kerry.