UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has urged UN Security Council to support a continued UN presence in Syria as it would facilitate a peaceful resolution to the political crisis in the violence-torn country, the Journal of Turkish Weekly reports.
“A continued United Nations presence in Syria that goes beyond our important humanitarian work would allow systematic and meaningful engagement with the Syrian stakeholders, inside the country…,” Ban said in a letter to the UN Security Council on Friday.
“Furthermore, a flexible United Nations presence in Syria would provide the United Nations impartial means to assess the situation on the ground, which would provide the basis for the United nations to address the situation more effectively,” he wrote in the document obtained by RIA Novosti.
The 15-member Security Council approved in April the establishment of the UN Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) with 300 unarmed military observers, to oversee a ceasefire in Syria and monitor the implementation of UN-Arab League Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan's six-point peace plan.
The mandate of the mission has been extended until August 19 despite the fact that most of the mission's activities have been suspended since June 16 due to escalating violence in the country.
