Little achieved in Syrian peace talks

U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said Saturday that a second round of talks in Geneva aimed at ending the crisis in Syria came to an end with little progress made. The opposition and the government have agreed to an agenda for a third round of talks, but they have not agreed on how to tackle it, he said. Brahimi apologized to the Syrian people, saying he was "very, very sorry" that, despite two rounds of talks, "we haven't done very much." The key sticking point is that the Syrian government wants to talk about tackling terrorism, while the opposition wants to discuss forming a transitional governing body. Little achieved in Syrian peace talks Hague: Syrian regime must work with us What drives British jihadists in Syria? Brahimi said he had suggested starting the next round of talks with one day of discussion on each issue, but the government would not agree. "Unfortunately the government has refused, which raises the suspicion of the opposition that, in fact, the government doesn't want to discuss the (transitional governing body) at all," he said. Brahimi said such intransigence was "not good for the process," nor was it good for Syria. Negotiators should go back to their leaders and reflect on a way forward, he said. "Do they want this process to take place or not?" Louay Safi, of the opposition umbrella group Syrian National Coalition, said, "We want to progress on the two sides. We want to be assured that the regime is really wanting a political solution, not delay tactics, and we didn't get that, for reasons that were described by Mr. Brahimi. "Our heart is in pain, our delegation is in pain, that as we speak here searching for a political solution the regime has chosen to bombard towns and cities killing civilians." Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations Bashar Jaafari, in turn, accused the opposition of trying to mislead observers and undermine the process. "We are committed to serving the interests of our own people, in stopping the bloodshed," he told reporters in Geneva. "We don't have an impasse. We are still in negotiations; we didn't say that we have failed." The snail-paced peace talks, which started last month with Brahimi serving as an intermediary between the two delegations sitting in the same room, have failed to produce an agreement on a first step for resolving the conflict, which has dragged on for nearly three years. More than 140,000 Syrians have died since March 2011, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based opposition group. About half of them were civilians, more than 7,000 children and more than 5,000 women, it said. It put Syrian military losses at more than 30,000 and pro-regime elements at more than 20,000. Those figures do not include the 18,000 Syrians who were jailed and are missing, it said.