The Jim Bakker Show

China says war must not be allowed on Korean peninsula

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) – War must not be allowed to break out on the Korean peninsula and the issue must be resolved through talks, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Thursday, while U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of the danger of “sleepwalking” into conflict.

Xi made his comments to visiting South Korean President Moon Jae-in just days after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered to begin direct talks with North Korea without pre-conditions.

But the White House said on Wednesday that no negotiations could be held with North Korea until it improved its behavior. The White House has declined to say whether President Donald Trump, who has taken a tougher rhetorical line toward North Korea, approved Tillerson’s overture.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tillerson’s offer of direct contacts with North Korea was “a very good signal”, while warning that a U.S. strike on the North would have catastrophic consequences.

North Korea tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile on Nov. 29, which it said could put all of the United States within range, in defiance of international pressure and U.N. sanctions.

While South Korea and China share the goal of getting North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and stop testing increasingly sophisticated long-range missiles, the two have not seen eye-to-eye on how to achieve this.

Meeting in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, Xi told Moon that the goal of denuclearising the Korean peninsula must be stuck to, and that war and chaos cannot be allowed to happen, state media said.

“The peninsula issue must in the end be resolved via dialogue and consultation,” Xi was cited as saying.

China and South Korea have an important shared interest in maintaining peace and stability, and China is willing to work with South Korea to prevent war and promote talks, Xi added.

China would support North and South Korea to improve relations as this was good for easing tension, he said.

Xi’s warm tone followed nearly a year of tense relations between the two countries.

‘DRAMATIC CIRCUMSTANCES’

China has been furious about the deployment of the U.S.-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea, saying its powerful radar can see far into China and will do nothing to ease tension with North Korea.

China and South Korea agreed in late October that they would normalize exchanges and move past the dispute over THAAD, which froze trade and business exchanges, and Moon has been keen to put the dispute behind them.

Xi reiterated China’s position on THAAD and said he hoped South Korea would continue to “appropriately handle” the issue.

Guterres, speaking to reporters in Tokyo after meeting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, said Security Council resolutions on North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs must be fully implemented by Pyongyang and other countries.

“It is very clear that the Security Council resolutions must be fully implemented, first of all by North Korea, but by all other countries whose role is crucial to … achieve the result we all aim at, which is the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” Guterres said.

He added that Security Council unity was also vital “to allow for the possibility of diplomatic engagement” that would allow denuclearization to take place.

“The worst possible thing that could happen is for us all to sleepwalk into a war that might have very dramatic circumstances,” Guterres said.

He said he expected a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Friday would deliver a strong expression of unity and the need for diplomacy to resolve the issue.

Japan says now is the time to keep up maximum pressure on North Korea, not start talks on its missile and nuclear programs.

China and Russia, however, have welcomed Tillerson’s overture.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said a strike on North Korea by the United States would have catastrophic consequences and that he hoped to work with Washington eventually to resolve the crisis on the Korean peninsula.

Russia does not accept North Korea’s nuclear status, Putin told an annual news conference. But he also said that some of Washington’s past actions had provoked North Korea into violating a 2005 pact to curb its nuclear program.

“We believe the two sides should now stop aggravating the situation,” Putin said.

North Korea justifies its weapons programs as necessary defense against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war, denies any such intention.

(Additional reporting by Linda Sieg in TOKYO,; Denis Pinchuk in MOSCOW and Christine Kim in SEOUL; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Philippine Congress gives Duterte green light to extend martial law in south

By Martin Petty

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine lawmakers on Wednesday overwhelmingly backed President Rodrigo Duterte’s plan to extend martial law for all of next year in Mindanao, an island he called a “flashpoint for trouble” and atrocities by Islamist and communist rebels.

The extension, until Dec. 31 next year, would mark the longest period of martial law since the 1970s era of late strongman Ferdinand Marcos, one of the darkest and most oppressive chapters of the country’s recent history.

At a joint session of Congress, 240 out of 267 lawmakers agreed with Duterte on the need for tough measures to stop Muslim militants recruiting fighters and preparing a new wave of attacks after occupying Marawi City for five months this year.

Duterte thanked Congress for its support and said the communist New People’s Army and militants loyal to Islamic State were equally threatening.

“There is a need for me to come up with something, otherwise Mindanao will blow apart,” he told reporters.

The government worries that mountainous, jungle-clad Mindanao, a region the size of South Korea that is home to the Muslim minority, could attract international extremists.

The Marawi City assault was the Philippines’ biggest security crisis in decades, killing more than 1,100 people, mostly militants. The armed forces took 154 days to win the battle, and 185 extremists are estimated to still be at large.

Duterte enjoys massive public support, but his frequent threats to expand martial law are contentious in a country that suffered nine years of oppression under Marcos before his ouster in 1986.

AUTHORITARIAN STREAK

Marcos was accused of inventing security threats to justify tightening his grip on power and crushing detractors. Duterte has frequently praised the leadership of Marcos.

Duterte’s opponents lament his authoritarian streak and speculate that his end game is to emulate Marcos by declaring martial law nationwide, as he has often threatened.

Asked several times on Wednesday if he was prepared to go that far, he said, “It depends on the enemies of the state.”

Minority lawmakers said the extension of martial law was illegal because Duterte had cited security threats, rather than rebellion or invasion, the conditions under which martial law can be invoked.

Duterte scoffed at the notion that the conflict in Mindanao, his home for most of his life, did not constitute rebellion.

“There is actually rebellion in Mindnanao, it is ongoing, the fighting is going on,” he said.

Congressman Tom Villarin said martial law would cost a huge amount of money, calling broad support for it a “death blow to our democracy”.

“We have made martial law the new normal, absent of any proof of invasion or rebellion,” he said. “Martial law now desensitizes the people to wrongly equate it with good governance and democracy.”

In his request to Congress on Monday, Duterte had argued that a little-known operative active in Mindanao, Abu Turaifie, was “said to be” Islamic State’s potential point man in Southeast Asia.

(Additional reporting by Karen Lema; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Seeking to extend martial law in Philippine south, Duterte says militants regrouping

By Neil Jerome Morales

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday asked Congress to extend martial law on the southern island of Mindanao for a year, arguing that Islamist militants have been regrouping since a five-month urban conflict ended there in October.

He said fighters who survived the battle for Marawi City were determined to establish a Southeast Asian ‘wilayat’ – or governorate – for Islamic State and named militant Abu Turaifie as potentially the radical group’s next regional “emir”.

The previous “emir”, Isnilon Hapilon, and another rebel commander loyal to Islamic State were killed in October as the military closed in on fighters who had occupied the heart of Marawi since May 23.

More than 1,100 people – mostly militants – were killed and 350,000 displaced by the Marawi unrest.

In his letter to the Senate and House of Representatives, Duterte said militants were radicalizing and recruiting local people, reorganizing themselves and building their finances.

“These activities are geared towards the conduct of intensified atrocities and armed public uprisings,” he said, adding that they were aimed at establishing a global Islamic caliphate and a ‘wilayat’, not only in the Philippines but the whole of Southeast Asia.

A group led by Turaifie – who heads a splinter group of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters and, according to Duterte, is “said to be Hapilon’s potential successor” – was planning bombings in the Cotabato province south of Marawi.

Intelligence reports indicate that militants are plotting to attack another city, Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said on Monday.

Duterte placed restive Mindanao, which has a population of 22 million, under military rule after the attack on Marawi, and martial law was due to be lifted there on Dec. 31.

Lawmakers will vote on his request for a one-year extension at a joint session on Wednesday, Congress majority leader Rodolfo Farinas told reporters.

Continuing martial law beyond the initial 60-day limit requires lawmakers’ approval, but the constitution does not limit any extensions.

Martial law allows for tougher surveillance and arrests without warrant, giving security forces greater rein to go after suspected extremist financiers and facilitators.

Duterte has long warned that Mindanao faced contamination by Islamic State, and experts say Muslim parts of the predominantly Catholic southern Philippines are fertile ground for expansion, due to their history of marginalization and neglect.

Critics of Duterte, who has held open the possibility of extending military rule to the whole country, have slammed the imposition of martial law in Mindanao as a misuse of power and evidence of the president’s authoritarian tendencies.

Martial law is a sensitive issue in the Philippines, bringing back memories of the 1970s rule of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who was accused of exaggerating security threats to justify harsh measures to suppress dissent.

Human rights group Karapatan questioned why martial law should be extended in Mindanao nearly two months after the military’s victory in Marawi City.

“This is a dangerous precedent that inches the entire country closer to a nationwide declaration of martial rule,” it said in a statement.

(Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

War-scarred neighborhoods in Ukraine’s rebel-held Donetsk

DONETSK, Ukraine (Reuters) – Ruined houses, shell craters and deserted streets – this is a typical scene in the Oktyabrsky district of Donetsk, the largest city of Ukraine’s pro-Russian rebel region that bears the same name.

The self-styled Donetsk and next-door Luhansk “people’s republics” broke away from central rule in 2014 after months of violent street protests in Kiev toppled Ukraine’s Moscow-leaning president and propelled pro-Western nationalists to power.

In this calm suburb of Donetsk, many people stood aloof of politics. But then fierce clashes broke out between Ukrainian government troops and pro-Russian separatists for control over the nearby Donetsk Airport.

A glistening air hub of steel and glass, specially built for the UEFA Euro 2012 of which Donetsk was a venue, the local airport was leveled to the ground, and many of the buildings in Oktyabrsky shared its fate.

A Reuters photo essay (http://reut.rs/2jONmoo ) captures images of hardship and despair of the dwellers of this district on the frontline of many battles.

Restored water and electricity supplies to local homes, with some households enjoying even gas supplies and heating, give a slight relief to some of the lucky locals as winter cold starts to bite.

“I try to keep away from politics, I only care about my family,” said Marina, aged 30. The woman, her husband and three children, one of whom is seriously ill, lost their house in 2014 when an artillery shell hit it.

“With no money, we were left in the street, with absolutely nothing. Everything burned, nothing was left … even spoons and forks were gone,” she said.

Her family changed several apartments, moving from one friend to another, before deciding that they would restore their house, using the bricks that had remained intact to build new walls. But they fast ran out of cash to buy construction materials.

The fragile ceasefire agreed in 2015 is often shattered by outbursts of gunfire and explosions of shells.

More than 8,000 private homes and more than 2,000 apartment houses were badly damaged in Donetsk, according to data provided by its administration. Most of these homes are uninhabitable and cannot be rebuilt.

A total of 64 temporary shelters for those who lost their homes in the war have been organized in various parts of Donetsk, a city of around one million residents.

Sometimes, student hostels accommodate the homeless. They include Alexandra Nikolayevna, 68, who survives with her several grandchildren at “University Hostel No.4” mainly due to handouts of humanitarian aid.

The fourth year of this ordeal has failed to shatter her political views. “We must be only with Russia, we only hope for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to take us under his wing,” she repeats. “Anyway, everyone says it’s Russian land.”

The feeling of relative normalcy which prevails in most parts of Donetsk, dissipates when you realise the city center is just slightly more than 10 km (6.3 miles) from the frontline.

The war is felt in the volatile rates of several currencies circulating in the city, in low wages and poor quality of local food.

And it is felt in the families which lost loved ones in the war that has claimed a total of more than 10,000 lives so far.

(Reporting by Alexander Ermochenko; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Russia will keep bases in Syria to strike at ‘terrorists’: Kremlin

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia will keep a naval and an air base in Syria capable of carrying out strikes against “terrorists” if required after a partial military pull-out announced by President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.

Putin on Monday ordered “a significant part” of Moscow’s military contingent to start pulling out of Syria, declaring their work largely done.

Putin, who polls show will be re-elected comfortably in March, made the announcement during a surprise visit to the Russian Hmeymim air base, where he met President Bashar al-Assad and addressed Russian forces.

“Thanks to the fact that the operation to save Syria and the liberation of Syrian land from terrorists have been completed, there is no longer a need for broad-scale combat strength,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

But he added that Russia will keep the Hmeymim air base in Syria’s Latakia Province and its naval facility in the port of Tartous.

“The President stressed that the terrorists might try to ‘walk tall’ again in Syria. If that happens, crushing blows will be carried out,” Peskov said.

(Reporting by Denis Pinchuk; Writing by Jack Stubbs and Denis Pinchuk; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Trump’s Jerusalem move will hasten Israel’s destruction: Iran

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital will hasten the country’s destruction, Iran’s defense minister said on Monday, while a top Revolutionary Guards commander phoned two Palestinian armed groups and pledged support for them.

Leaders of Iran, where opposition to Israel and support for the Palestinian cause has been central to foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic revolution, have denounced last week’s announcement by the U.S. president, including a plan to move the U.S. embassy to the city.

The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

“(Trump’s) step will hasten the destruction of the Zionist regime and will double the unity of Muslims,” Iran’s defense minister, Brigadier General Amir Hatami, said on Monday, according to state media.

The army’s chief of staff, General Mohammad Baqeri, said Trump’s “foolish move” could be seen as the beginning of a new intifada, or Palestinian uprising.

Iran has long supported a number of anti-Israeli militant groups, including the military wing of Lebanon-based Hezbollah, which the deputy commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, said was “stronger than the Zionist regime.”

Similarly, Qassem Soleimani, the head of the branch of the Guards that oversees operations outside of Iran’s borders pledged the Islamic Republic’s “complete support for Palestinian Islamic resistance movements” after phone calls with commanders from Islamic Jihad and the Izz al-Deen Qassam brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, on Monday according to Sepah News, the news site of the Guards.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday stepped up efforts to rally Middle Eastern countries against U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which EU foreign ministers meanwhile declined to support.

(Reporting By Babak Dehghanpisheh; editing by John Stonestreet)

More than 8 million Yemenis ‘a step away from famine’: U.N.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Warring sides must let more aid get through to 8.4 million people who are “a step away from famine” in Yemen, a senior U.N. official said on Monday.

A Saudi-led military coalition fighting the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen’s civil war blockaded ports last month after a missile was fired toward Riyadh.

Jamie McGoldrick, the humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, said the blockade has since been eased, but the situation remained dire.

“The continuing blockade of ports is limiting supplies of fuel, food and medicines; dramatically increasing the number of vulnerable people who need help,” McGoldrick said in a statement.

“The lives of millions of people, including 8.4 million Yemenis who are a step away from famine, hinge on our ability to continue our operations and to provide health, safe water, food, shelter and nutrition support,” he added.

That marked an increase from past U.N. estimates of around 8 million people on the brink of famine.

The coalition accuses Iran of sending weapons to its Houthi allies, including missile parts, through Yemen’s main Hodeidah port, were most food supplies enter.

Saudi state television said on Monday a U.N delegation of experts has arrived in Riyadh to meet the coalition and the Yemeni government the coalition supports “to prevent the transfer of weapons and rockets to Houthis”.

Iran has denied supplying the Houthis with weapons, saying the U.S. and Saudi allegations are “baseless and unfounded”.

The United Nations says food shortages caused by the warring parties blocking supplies has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The Saudis intervened in neighboring Yemen in 2015 after the Houthis advanced on the southern port city of Aden and forced President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his government into exile.

The conflict has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced more than 2 million and triggered a cholera epidemic that has infected about 1 million people.

The U.S. government on Friday called on the Saudi-led military coalition to facilitate the free flow of humanitarian aid to all of Yemen’s ports and through Sana’a airport.

A senior State Department official told reporters in Geneva on Monday that the United States had provided nearly $638 million in humanitarian assistance to Yemen in the U.S. fiscal year 2017 that ended on Sept 30.

“We have called on both sides to stop the fighting and seek a political solution to the problem,” the official said.

He said the United States had made its position clear to its allies to end the blockade and called on the Houthis to allow access for humanitarian supplies as “there are shocking shortage of food, fuel and medicines that are causing great suffering”.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, Writing by Reem Shamseddine and Sami Aboudi; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Alison Williams)

Iraqi PM says Islamic State completely ‘evicted’ from Iraq

By Maher Chmaytelli and Ahmed Aboulenein

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Saturday that Iraqi forces had driven the last remnants of Islamic State from the country, three years after the militant group captured about a third of Iraq’s territory.

The Iraqi forces recaptured the last areas still under IS control along the border with Syria, state television quoted Abadi as telling an Arab media conference in Baghdad.

“Commander-in-Chief @HaiderAlAbadi announces that Iraq’s armed forces have secured the western desert & the entire Iraq Syria border, says this marks the end of the war against Daesh terrorists who have been completely defeated and evicted from Iraq,” the federal government’s official account tweeted.

In a separate tweet later, Abadi said: “Our heroic armed forces have now secured the entire length of the Iraq-Syria border. We defeated Daesh through our unity and sacrifice for the nation. Long live Iraq and its people.”

The U.S.-led coalition that has been supporting Iraqi force against Islamic State tweeted its congratulations.

“The Coalition congratulate the people of Iraq on their significant victory against #Daesh. We stand by them as they set the conditions for a secure and prosperous #futureiraq,” said the tweet. Daesh is the Arabic name for Islamic State.

Last month Iraqi forces captured Rawa, the last remaining town under Islamic State control, near the Syrian border.

Mosul, the group’s de facto capital in Iraq, fell in July after a grueling nine-month campaign backed by a U.S.-led coalition that saw much of the northern Iraqi city destroyed.

Islamic State’s Syrian capital Raqqa also fell to a U.S.-backed Kurdish-led coalition in September.

The forces fighting Islamic State in both countries now expect a new phase of guerrilla warfare, a tactic the militants have already shown themselves capable of.

Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who in 2014 had declared in Mosul the founding of a new Islamic caliphate, released an audio recording on Sept. 28 that indicated he was alive, after several reports he had been killed. He urged his followers to keep up the fight despite setbacks.

He is believed to be hiding in the stretch of desert in the border area.

Driven from its two de facto capitals, Islamic State was progressively squeezed this year into an ever-shrinking pocket of desert, straddling the frontier between the two countries, by enemies that include most regional states and global powers.

In Iraq, the group confronted U.S.-backed Iraqi government forces and Iranian-trained paramilitary groups known as Popular Mobilisation.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli and Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Defector says thousands of Islamic State fighters left Raqqa in secret deal

By Dominic Evans and Orhan Coskun

ANKARA (Reuters) – A high-level defector from Kurdish-led forces that captured the Syrian city of Raqqa from Islamic State has recanted his account of the city’s fall, saying thousands of IS fighters – many more than first reported – left under a secret, U.S.-approved deal.

Talal Silo, a former commander in the Syrian Democratic Forces, said the SDF arranged to bus all remaining Islamic State militants out of Raqqa even though it said at the time it was battling diehard foreign jihadists in the city.

U.S. officials described Silo’s comments as “false and contrived” but a security official in Turkey, where Silo defected three weeks ago, gave a similar account of Islamic State’s defeat in its Syrian stronghold. Turkey has been at odds with Washington over U.S. backing for the Kurdish forces who led the fight for Raqqa.

Silo was the SDF spokesman and one of the officials who told the media in mid-October – when the deal was reached – that fewer than 300 fighters left Raqqa with their families while others would fight on.

However, he told Reuters in an interview that the number of fighters who were allowed to go was far higher and the account of a last-ditch battle was a fiction designed to keep journalists away while the evacuation took place.

He said a U.S. official in the international coalition against Islamic State, whom he did not identify, approved the deal at a meeting with an SDF commander.

At the time there were conflicting accounts of whether or not foreign Islamic State fighters had been allowed to leave Raqqa. The BBC later reported that one of the drivers in the exodus described a convoy of up to 7 km (4 miles) long made up of 50 trucks, 13 buses and 100 Islamic State vehicles, packed with fighters and ammunition.

The Turkish government has expressed concern that some fighters who left Raqqa could have been smuggled across the border into Turkey and could try to launch attacks there or in the West.

“Agreement was reached for the terrorists to leave, about 4,000 people, them and their families,” Silo said, adding that all but about 500 were fighters.

He said they headed east to Islamic State-controlled areas around Deir al-Zor, where the Syrian army and forces supporting President Bashar al-Assad were gaining ground.

For three days the SDF banned people from going to Raqqa, saying fighting was in progress to deal with militants who had not given themselves up.

“It was all theater,” Silo said.

“The announcement was cover for those who left for Deir al-Zor”, he said, adding that the agreement was endorsed by the United States which wanted a swift end to the Raqqa battle so the SDF could move on towards Deir al-Zor.

U.S. AT ODDS WITH ALLY TURKEY

It was not clear where the evacuees from Raqqa ended up.

The Syrian Democratic Forces deny that Islamic State fighters were able to leave Raqqa for Deir al-Zor, and the U.S.-led military coalition which backs the SDF said it “does not make deals with terrorists”.

“The coalition utterly refutes any false accusations from any source that suggests the coalition’s collusion with ISIS,” it said in a statement.

However, a Turkish security official said that many more Islamic State personnel left Raqqa than was acknowledged. “Statements that the U.S. or the coalition were engaged in big conflicts in Raqqa are not true,” the official added.

He told Reuters Turkey believed those accounts were aimed at diverting attention from the departure of Islamic State members, and complained that Turkey had been kept in the dark.

Ankara, a NATO ally of Washington’s and a member of the U.S.-led coalition, has disagreed sharply with the United States over its support for the Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters who spearheaded the fight against Islamic State in Raqqa.

Turkey says the YPG is an extension of the PKK, which has waged a three-decade insurgency in southeast Turkey and is designated a terrorist group by the United States and European Union.

Silo spoke to Reuters in a secure location on the edge of Ankara in the presence of Turkish security officers. He said the security was for his own protection and he denied SDF assertions that he had been pressured into defecting by Turkey, where his children live.

A member of Syria’s Turkmen minority, Silo said his decision to speak out now was based on disillusionment with the structure of the SDF, which was dominated by Kurdish YPG fighters at the expense of Arab, Turkmen and Assyrian allies, as well as the outcome in Raqqa, where he said a city had been destroyed but not the enemy.

The Raqqa talks took place between a Kurdish SDF commander, Sahin Cilo, and an intermediary from Islamic State whose brother-in-law was the Islamic State “emir” in Raqqa, Silo said.

After they reached agreement Cilo headed to a U.S. military base near the village of Jalabiya. “He came back with the agreement of the U.S. administration for those terrorists to head to Deir al-Zor,” Silo said.

The coalition said two weeks ago that one of its leaders was present at the talks but not an active participant in the deal which it said was reached “despite explicit coalition disagreement with letting armed ISIS terrorists leave Raqqa”.

(Reporting by Dominic Evans; editing by Giles Elgood)

U.N. to assess if either side trying to ‘sabotage’ Syria talks

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – The mediator of U.N.-led Syrian peace talks in Geneva will assess next week whether either side is trying to sabotage the process, he said on Thursday, after President Bashar al-Assad’s negotiators said they would turn up five days late.

“We shall assess the behaviour of both sides, government and opposition, in Geneva,” U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura said. “And based on that we will then decide how this… can be a building up or not, or a sabotage of Geneva.”

If either side were seen to be sabotaging the process it could have “a very bad impact on any other political attempt to have processes elsewhere,” he said.

He said the Geneva rounds of talks were the only peace process backed by the U.N. Security Council, although there were many other initiatives being planned.

He did not elaborate, but Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is seeking re-election next year, has suggested holding a “Syrian Congress” in the Russian city of Sochi early in 2018.

Diplomats see Putin’s plan as a bid to draw a line under the war after seven years of fighting and to celebrate Russia’s role as the power that tipped the balance of the war and became the key player in the peace process.

The Geneva talks have failed to build up any speed despite eight rounds of negotiations.

After months away from the U.N. talks, the two sides returned to Geneva at the end of November, with de Mistura hoping to discuss an agenda including constitutional and electoral reform.

But the government delegation arrived a day late and left after two days, saying the opposition had “mined the road” to the talks by insisting that Assad could not play any interim role in Syria’s political transition.

The delegation returned to Damascus to “consult and refresh”, but chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja’afari initially threatened not to come back, which the opposition said would be “an embarrassment to Russia”.

De Mistura said on Thursday that Ja’afari’s delegation had confirmed it would return on Sunday, five days later than expected.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Hugh Lawson)

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