22 December 2015•Update: 22 December 2015
GENEVA
The head of the UN in Geneva has confirmed that a new round of Syrian peace talks will be held in Jan. 2016.
The UN's special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, is planning to Geneva talks towards the end of next month, a UN official confirmed on Tuesday.
No exact date has been set for the negotiations.
Two previous rounds of peace talks were held in Switzerland in 2012 and 2014 but failed to end the five-year conflict, which has killed over 250,000 people.
The UN Security Council on Friday adopted a resolution endorsing a peace plan to foster an end to the civil war.
The unanimously adopted resolution asks UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to bring together the Syrian government and the opposition "to engage in formal negotiations on a political transition process on an urgent basis, with a target of early January 2016 for the initiation of talks".
