De Mistura announces his resignation at the end of next month
The UN Special Envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, announced on Wednesday his intention to resign from his post at the end of November.
With this announcement, de Mistura ends four years of attempts to resolve the conflict in Syria.
During the UN Security Council session, the UN envoy called on the guarantors to the Astana negotiations on the Syrian crisis to meet this month.
“I will leave my position in November”, de Mistura told a UN Security Council session.
“I invite my guarantor to consult with me before the end of the month in Geneva”.
Sources at the UN said that the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterich, is looking for a replacement for de Mistura.
UN diplomats said that the former Algerian foreign minister, Ramtane Lamamra, among the list of candidates to succeed de Mistura in this task.
“The Secretary-General is waiting for the right time to announce the name of an Arab diplomat who will succeed de Mistura after the approval of the five permanent members of the Security Council and the approval of the Syrian government”, the newspaper quoted a senior UN official as saying.
The source pointed out that “there are objections to the names previously proposed, namely the Special Coordinator for the Middle East peace process the Bulgarian diplomat Nikolai Mladenov, who faced objections by the Syrian government as well as a Russian Vito, and UN Special Envoy for Iraq the Slovak diplomat Ján Kubiš, who showed the Americans some observations on taking this task.
