The UN expresses concern that the conditions set by Damascus to open the Bab al-Hawa border crossing for aid shipments from Turkey to rebel-held areas are “unacceptable”.
It appears from documents that the AFP news agency took note of on Friday.
In the letter that the authorities in Syria sent to the UN announcing the opening of the border crossing, there are, according to the UN agency for humanitarian aid (Ocha), two unacceptable conditions.
One is that the regime in Syria points out that the UN must not communicate with organizations designated as “terrorists” and the other is that the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) must monitor and enable the distribution of humanitarian aid in the northwest Syria.
On Thursday, the Syrian government in Damascus announced that it had decided to allow aid to pass by land into rebel-held areas from Turkey via the Bab al-Hawa crossing for six months, starting the same day.
The Bab al-Hawa border crossing was closed on Monday after Russia vetoed in the Security Council a nine-month extension of a resolution allowing humanitarian aid to pass through.