GENEVA — The UN envoy for Syria on Wednesday announced a "temporary pause" in peace talks in Geneva just two days after they officially began amid intensified fighting, saying the process will resume later this month.
Speaking to reporters after a meeting with opposition leaders, Staffan de Mistura insisted "this is not the end, and it is not the failure of the talks."
De Mistura said both sides were "interested in having the political process started," and that he had set a new date of Feb. 25 for the resumption of the talks.
The announcement comes just two days after de Mistura opened the first talks in two years aimed at ending a five-year war that has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced an estimated 11 million.
Syrian forces backed by Russian airstrikes have advanced in northern Syria in recent days, leading the opposition to accuse Damascus of negotiating in bad faith.
On Wednesday, the troops blasted their way into two Shiite villages in northern Syria, breaking a long-running rebel siege, Syrian TV reported.
The two villages, Nubl and Zahra, are located in the middle of opposition territory. They have been blockaded by rebel groups for around three years, with the army occasionally airdropping food and other aid.
Their capture would mark a major victory for government forces, which have made significant advances in Aleppo province in the past few days, severing a key supply route linking rebels in Aleppo city to the Turkish border.
Pro-government forces are waging a major offensive north of Aleppo in an attempt to besiege rebel-held neighbourhoods. If it succeeds, it will be one of the biggest blows to the insurgents since they captured large parts of the city, Syria's largest, in the summer of 2012.
De Mistura said both sides had expressed concerns about the talks, with the government wanting to address "procedural issues before talking about (the) humanitarian side."
But he said "the U.N. cannot allow simply procedural matters to actually become more important than actually the result for the humanitarian situation for the Syrian people, who have been waiting for us to deliver not a conference but something concrete for them."
He said he would not directly address Thursday's developments on the ground, but that "military activities and other reasons" had made it impossible to make headway on humanitarian issues like the lifting of sieges on many Syrian cities, towns and villages or the granting of access to "unreachable" parts of the country.
For the opposition, the Aleppo advances cast a long shadow over the talks.
Basma Kodmani, a member of the opposition's negotiating team, described the offensive as a "horrible development," saying it sends the message that "there is nothing to negotiate. Just go home."
Syrian TV said the siege of Nubl and Zahra was broken by the army and Shiite militias known as the Popular Defence Committees. The Hezbollah-owned Al-Manar TV also reported the advance and showed exclusive footage of the fighting on the outskirts of the villages.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group that monitors the conflict through activists on the ground, said the Syrian army was one kilometre (mile) away from the two villages.
Meanwhile, an aid convoy headed to a besieged rebel-held town near Damascus, but Syria's opposition said that such deliveries are meaningless given the situation in Aleppo.
The convoy heading to Moadamiyeh is the second aid delivery to rebel-held areas near the capital in as many days, a spokesman for the International Committee for the Red Cross said. Pawel Krzysiek told The Associated Press that 12 trucks carrying food, medicine and medical equipment were expected to arrive later in the day.
By late afternoon, Krzysiek said the convoy is "about to enter." He posted a photograph on his Twitter account showing hundreds of people gathered at a distance waiting for the supplies to reach them.
The humanitarian situation in the town worsened toward the end of last year after the government choked off the last access point. Opposition activists and residents say there are dozens of cases of severe malnutrition in Moadamiyeh.
The Syrian opposition had demanded that aid be allowed into 18 besieged areas throughout the country and that Syrian and Russian forces halt the bombardment of rebel-held areas ahead of the talks, which officially began Monday.
Kodmani called the latest aid delivery a "positive development," but said "it is way below what we are hoping to see happen."
De Mistura has shuttled between the government and opposition delegations in Geneva. On Monday, he formally declared the start of what he calls "proximity talks" between the two sides, which would have the two delegations seated in separate rooms.
The talks are aimed at ending a war that has killed 250,000 people, displaced millions and left much of the country in ruins. The last round of talks broke down in 2014.