NEW YORK, February 2 (RIA Novosti) - The United Nations confirmed on Friday that its special representative for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich on Saturday.
“The Joint Special Representative for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, will meet this evening with Mouaz Alkhatib, a leader of the Syrian opposition, on the margins of a security conference in Munich,” said Deputy Spokesperson for UN Secretary General Eduardo del Buey.
“Tomorrow, he is scheduled to have bilateral meetings with United States Vice-President Joseph Biden and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov,” he went on.
Alkhatib, a leader of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SNCROF), earlier expressed his readiness to meet with Lavrov, Biden and Brahimi in Munich, prompting media rumors of a four-party meeting.
Earlier on Friday, the Russian Foreign Ministry denied the four-party meeting reports, saying that “as of today, there is no such meeting mentioned in the program of the Russian foreign minister.”
Syria has been locked in an increasingly bloody civil war since demonstrations broke out against president Assad in March 2011. According to UN estimates, at least 60,000 people have been killed in the 22-month-old conflict and more than 700,000 have been forced to flee Syria.
