The Friends of Syria core group meeting in Paris

We’ve just had in Paris a meeting of a group of countries who are trying to help move forward the Syrian problem which William Hague, our Foreign Minister, was here to attend.

Written version

I’ve done a lot of work on crisis management in my career and I have to say that, for me, the Syrian crisis is one of the most dangerous I’ve had to deal with.

We can already see that it is spreading beyond the borders of Syria, with major refugee movements to Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey – putting a lot of pressure on many countries in the region. In Iraq we also see some of the repercussions of the violence happening in Syria.

The group of countries that came together in Paris called the “London 11 group” (they first met in London) and is made up of European countries, the US, Russia, some countries from the Arab world, Turkey and also the Syrian opposition. They reaffirmed absolutely clearly that we need Assad and his government to leave for there to be a political transition, and for that there needs to be a united Syrian opposition who can show themselves to be credible.

Whilst they were here the ministers did a lot of work to help the opposition come together and to press ahead towards this important meeting between the Syrian opposition and representatives of the government in Geneva on the 22^nd January. The best chance for peace in Syria is to come to some kind of political transition agreement.

Further information

• Read the Paris Declaration after the Core Group meeting on 12 January 2014
• Read the Foreign Secretary’s oral statement to Parliament on Syria on 13 January 2014