Syria's bloody crisis moved no nearer to resolution at the Geneva II peace conference on Wednesday as the Damascus government insisted that Bashar al-Assad would not step down and called western-backed rebels fighting to overthrow him "terrorists" and "traitors to their own people".
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, described an "all-encompassing disaster" in Syria but there was little sign in a long day of formal speeches of the constructive action he urged to find a way out of a conflict that has already cost an estimated 130,000 lives, made millions refugees and destabilised the Middle East.
"Our purpose was to send a message to the two Syrian delegations and to the Syrian people that the world wants an urgent end to the conflict," Ban said in a closing press conference at the talks in Montreux. "Enough is enough, the time has to come to negotiate," Ban said. "We must seize this fragile chance."
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, spoke of the "extraordinary suffering" in Syria and stated flatly that Assad would have to go: "There is no way the man who has led a brutal response to his own people can regain the legitimacy to govern," he said. "One man and his henchmen can no longer hold an entire nation hostage."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/22/syria-peace-talks-assad-future
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