عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Arab World

UN Syria Envoy Voices Dismay at Lack of Progress in Constitutional Talks

United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen speaks at a press conference after a meeting of the Syrian Constitutional Committee in Geneva, January 29, 2021. (Reuters)
United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen speaks at a press conference after a meeting of the Syrian Constitutional Committee in Geneva, January 29, 2021. (Reuters)
TT
TT

UN Syria Envoy Voices Dismay at Lack of Progress in Constitutional Talks

United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen speaks at a press conference after a meeting of the Syrian Constitutional Committee in Geneva, January 29, 2021. (Reuters)
United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen speaks at a press conference after a meeting of the Syrian Constitutional Committee in Geneva, January 29, 2021. (Reuters)

The UN special envoy for Syria expressed disappointment Friday after five days of meetings between delegations from the Syrian government, opposition and civil society groups aimed at revising the constitution of the war-torn country ended without progress.

“I told the 45 members of the drafting bodies we can’t continue like this," Geir Pedersen told reporters in Geneva, at the end of the latest, fifth round of the Constitutional Committee for Syria.

Pedersen hinted the Syrian government delegation was to blame for the lack of progress. The UN envoy said he presented a proposal to the heads of the government and opposition delegations, adding that his proposal was rejected by the government team and accepted by the opposition.

The United States and several Western allies have accused Syrian president Bashar Assad of deliberately stalling and delaying the drafting of a new constitution until after presidential elections are held this year to avoid a UN-supervised vote, as called for by the UN Security Council.

According to Syria’s elections law, presidential elections are to take place between April 16 and May 16 — at least 90 days before Assad’s current seven-year term in office expires. Assad has been in power since 2000.

Pedersen said there is no agreed time for another meeting. He will be briefing the UN Security Council on Feb. 9, after which he will give further details about what was discussed.

“This week has been a disappointment,” Pedersen said. “I set out a few things I thought we should be able to achieve before we started this meeting and I’m afraid we did not manage to achieve these things.”

Syria’s nearly 10-year conflict has killed more than half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war 23 million population, including more than 5 million refugees mostly in neighboring countries.

At a Russian-hosted Syrian peace conference in January 2018, an agreement was reached to form a 150-member committee to draft a new constitution. It took until September 2019 before a committee was formed.

A 45-member committee started its meetings in Geneva on Monday. This week’s meetings involved 15 people from each delegation.

Most Viewed

 
 
Arab World

Former Israeli Spies Describe Attack Using Exploding Electronic Devices against Lebanon’s Hezbollah

An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)
An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)
TT
TT

Former Israeli Spies Describe Attack Using Exploding Electronic Devices against Lebanon’s Hezbollah

An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)
An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)

Two recently retired senior Israeli intelligence agents shared new details about a deadly clandestine operation years in the making that targeted Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and Syria using exploding pagers and walkie talkies three months ago.
Hezbollah began striking Israel almost immediately after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the Israel-Hamas war, The Associated Press said.
The agents spoke with CBS “60 Minutes” in a segment aired Sunday night. They wore masks and spoke with altered voices to hide their identities.
One agent said the operation started 10 years ago using walkie-talkies laden with hidden explosives, which Hezbollah didn't realize it was buying from Israel, its enemy. The walkie-talkies were not detonated until September, a day after booby-trapped pagers were set off.
“We created a pretend world,” said the officer, who went by the name “Michael.”
Phase two of the plan, using the booby-trapped pagers, kicked in in 2022 after Israel's Mossad intelligence agency learned Hezbollah had been buying pagers from a Taiwan-based company, the second officer said.
The pagers had to be made slightly larger to accommodate the explosives hidden inside. They were tested on dummies multiple times to find the right amount of explosive that would hurt only the Hezbollah fighter and not anyone else in close proximity.
Mossad also tested numerous ring tones to find one that sounded urgent enough to make someone pull the pager out of their pocket.
The second agent, who went by the name “Gabriel,” said it took two weeks to convince Hezbollah to switch to the heftier pager, in part by using false ads on YouTube promoting the devices as dustproof, waterproof, providing a long battery life and more.
He described the use of shell companies, including one based in Hungary, to dupe the Taiwanese firm, Gold Apollo, into unknowingly partnering with the Mossad.
Hezbollah also was unaware it was working with Israel.
Gabriel compared the ruse to a 1998 psychological film about a man who has no clue that he is living in a false world and his family and friends are actors paid to keep up the illusion.
“When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad,” Gabriel said. “We make like ‘Truman Show,’ everything is controlled by us behind the scene. In their experience, everything is normal. Everything was 100% kosher including businessman, marketing, engineers, showroom, everything.”
By September, Hezbollah militants had 5,000 pagers in their pockets.
Israel triggered the attack on Sept. 17, when pagers all over Lebanon started beeping. The devices would explode even if the person failed to push the buttons to read an incoming encrypted message.
The next day, Mossad activated the walkie-talkies, some of which exploded at funerals for some of the approximately 30 people who were killed in the pager attacks.
Gabriel said the goal was more about sending a message than actually killing Hezbollah fighters.
“If he just died, so he’s dead. But if he’s wounded, you have to take him to the hospital, take care of him. You need to invest money and efforts,” he said. “And those people without hands and eyes are living proof, walking in Lebanon, of ‘don’t mess with us.’ They are walking proof of our superiority all around the Middle East.”
In the days after the attack, Israel's air force hit targets across Lebanon, killing thousands. Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was assassinated when Israel dropped bombs on his bunker.
By November, the war between Israel and Hezbollah, a byproduct of the deadly attack by Hamas group in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, ended with a ceasefire. More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas militants, health officials have said.
The agent using the name “Michael” said that the day after the pager explosions, people in Lebanon were afraid to turn on their air conditioners out of fear that they would explode, too.
“There is real fear,” he said.
Asked if that was intentional, he said, “We want them to feel vulnerable, which they are. We can’t use the pagers again because we already did that. We’ve already moved on to the next thing. And they’ll have to keep on trying to guess what the next thing is.”