World powers must push for political solution in Syria: UN

Reuters, Geneva :
United Nations war crimes investigators called on world powers on Tuesday to pressure the warring sides in Syria to return to the negotiating table to end the conflict and civilian suffering.
Paulo Pinheiro, chair of the U.N. independent commission of inquiry on Syria, said that the Syrian government was conducting daily air strikes, while militant groups including Islamic State also carried out indiscriminate attacks.
“We need all states to insist time and time again that influential states and the (U.N.) Security Council unconditionally support the political process,” Pinheiro told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The Syrian government and opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) – who ended the last round of talks in Geneva in late April – must resume talks and agree to confidence-building measures, including an end to indiscriminate bombings, granting access to besieged areas and releasing prisoners, he said. “Schools, hospitals, mosques, water stations – they are all being turned into rubble,” Pinheiro said. “Tens of thousands are trapped between frontlines and borders in the north and south of Syria.”
Syria’s ambassador Hussam Aala, in a speech to the rights forum, accused regional powers of “supporting terrorism” and “causing the failure of intra-Syrian talks in Geneva”. He said schools and hospitals in Aleppo were being destroyed and civilians killed by missiles provided by Turkey and Qatar to the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s Syrian branch.
European Union ambassador Peter Sorensen said: “The EU condemns the excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks that the Syrian regime continues to commit against its own people.”
Meanwhile, Jihadists of the Islamic State group drove Syrian regime troops out of Raqa province on Monday, killing dozens of fighters in a lightning counter-attack, a monitoring group said.
The attack was mounted late on Sunday in response to a regime offensive in the IS stronghold of Raqa launched on June 3 that advanced about 20 kilometres (12 miles) toward the town of Tabqa, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
It came as US Secretary of State John Kerry said he had read a memo from a group of frustrated diplomats urging strikes against the Syrian regime and found it “very good”.
The “dissent cable” became public last week after 51 serving US officials signed a call for direct US military action to force President Bashar al-Assad’s regime to negotiate for peace. The memo was seen as a criticism of President Barack Obama’s cautious approach, but the “dissent channel” is an approved mechanism for diplomats opposed to official policy.
Syria’s civil war began with the brutal repression of anti-government demonstrations in 2011 and has now killed more than 280,000 people and displaced millions.
Government troops, backed by Russian air strikes, in early June pushed into Raqa for the first time since 2014, aiming for the country’s largest dam at Tabqa on the Euphrates River.
“Daesh (IS) has managed to drive out regime troops from the administrative borders of Raqa province after a fierce counter-offensive,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
It said the jihadists had sent hundreds of reinforcements from their de facto capital of Raqa city to defend Tabqa, which also has an air base, located 50 kilometres to the west.
“More than 40 members of the pro-regime forces were killed,” said the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a vast network of sources on the ground for its information.