admin“We have seen an unrelenting flow of refugees across all borders. We are running double shifts to register people,” Sybella Wilkes, spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told Reuters in Geneva.
Jordan hosts 167 444 registered Syrian refugees, as well as 51 729 who await processing, many of who fled fighting around Deraa, according to UNHCR figures posted overnight that show an overall regional total of about 705 000 refugees as of 27 January.
“We are trying to clear a backlog of people because the numbers have gone up so dramatically (in Jordan and Lebanon),” Wilkes said.
Lebanon has 157 139 Syrian refugees, as well as nearly 69 000 who await processing. “The needs are enormous, we can’t get to everyone fast enough,” Wilkes quoted Ninette Kelley, UNHCR representative in Lebanon, as saying yesterday.
Turkey has 163 161 Syrian refugees in its 15 camps while Iraq hosts 77 415. There are 14 312 in Egypt and 5 417 registered across the rest of North Africa, the agency said.
Meanwhile, in a fresh attempt to press for a swift political transition in conflict-torn Syria, a large gathering including senior officials of Syrian opposition and delegations from Western backers was held here in Paris on Monday.
A last meeting but not least to resolve the Syrian crisis which is now in its 22nd month, claiming some 60 000 lives.
Addressing the opening of the meeting, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius urged acts and decisions to pave the way for the opposition to set a transition government able to restore stability in Syria.
“We must act and decide. We are gathered here to work effectively with the coalition and give it the needed tools,” Fabius said.
France’s top diplomat also warned of “. . . Islamist groups that risk gaining ground if we do not act as we should”.
“We cannot let a revolution that started as a peaceful and democratic protest degenerate into a conflict of militias,” the minister added.
However, no concrete decisions came out after the half-day conference as violence is escalating in the Arab country triggering question marks over the usefulness of the political marathon.
In the view of a French diplomat, Syrian opposition backers “do not want this meeting, as was the case with last ones, the opportunity to align numbers and make addition . . . and want to help concretely the Syrian National Coalition (SNC).”
“It seems well gone . . . The coalition is assured to operate several months, so with the money it will receive, by technical means that it will be granted or the expertise that many countries undertake to provide,” the diplomat was quoted by the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur as saying.
As no sign is in sight of a close fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the coalition’s arrival to power, Riad Seif, vice-president of Syrian exiled opposition umbrella, said “time is not on our side” and that the coalition no longer wanted supporters’ promises that would remain on paper.
“I hope that our meeting will be different from previous ones. I hope that the Syrian people will see tangible results on the ground because they do not accept their representatives to come back empty-handed, with only promises that are never kept,” the opposition’s senior official stressed.
Monday’s talks are considered a follow-up meeting by Paris after its “Friends of Syria” summit held in Marrakesh last month.
During this meeting, 100 countries recognised the Syrian National Coalition as “the legitimate representative of the Syrian people”, and pledged to award it $145 million to improve the coalition’s political credentials and expertise and help Syrians weakened by month-long conflicts. — AP
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