Point presse commun avec l'Envoyé spécial des Nations Unies pour la Syrie, M Staffan de Mistura et les Ministres des Affaires étrangères Allemand et Français

Thank you so much for organizing this opportunity. Merci beaucoup pour être tous ensemble dans le même message. The message is very clear. I was the other day in Geneva where I met John Kerry and the Minister of Foreign affairs of Saudi Arabia. I was yesterday in Moscow to meet Sergei Lavrov the day before, and today in Berlin. The message is exactly the one we have been saying: there are priorities and the top one of the priority is the one that Syrian people are telling us.

They are telling us we are looking for peace, we are looking for the end of this conflict, we believe in discussion in Geneva but we need to see with our eyes that the cessation of hostilities takes place again. And the test is Aleppo now. That’s why I hope through the security council meeting that we are going to have, through the meeting we had in Moscow and through the meeting which are taking place between also John Kerry and Lavrov, who are the co-sponsors of the cessation of hostilities, that we will see it happening. The alternative is truly quite catastrophic because we could see 400,000 people moving through the Turkish border. We could see what, at the moment, what looks like a possibility of a political transition to be actually handicapped by a cessation of hostilities, which is still there, could be collapsing.

Bottom line, Aleppo. Aleppo. And I hope we’ll get there with your support and thank you for organizing this, this has been timely and appropriate.