ISSG meeting needed to relaunch Geneva talks — Western diplomatic source

GENEVA, April 19. /TASS/. The situation at the intra-Syrian talks in Geneva, Switzerland, calls for convening a meeting of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), a Western diplomatic source close to the negotiating process told TASS on Tuesday.

"The ISSG meeting is necessary in order to relaunch the political process," he said.

Answering a question whether the meeting could take place as early as April 21-22, as proposed by the main coordinator of the Syrian opposition’s Supreme Negotiations Committee, Riyad Hijab, the source said: "You’ve heard what he said. But the timeframe will be determined by the group members, and it is so far early to talk about it."

On April 17 and 18, some representatives of the Supreme Negotiations Committee, including Hijab himself, made a number of statements over the situation at Aleppo saying that they would not be able to continue work in Geneva, if the situation there continued to deteriorate.

However, according to Russian envoy to the United Nations office and other international organizations in Geneva Alexei Borodavkin, the cessation of hostilities regime is violated mostly by illegal armed groups, not the army. Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told TASS that the fighting at Aleppo was directed against terrorists.