Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called on the international community to continue humanitarian support for the people of Aleppo. "It is precisely because our efforts to achieve a lasting ceasefire have not been successful that we must not end our humanitarian support."
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The humanitarian disaster,Federal Foreign Minister Steinmeier said, is worsening from day to day.
The images and news from the eastern districts of the Syrian city of Aleppo show an almost unparalleled cruelty, said Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Berlin on Wednesday. Ways must be found to put a stop to the killing and the dying, he said. "This madness cannot and must not carry on indefinitely," he said.
The ceasefire negotiated painstakingly over a period of many weeks between the Americans and the Russians had not even been put to the test, said Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The Assad regime and its supporters, as well as radical Islamist groups, did all they could to torpedo the ceasefire. Nevertheless, we cannot remain inactive, declared the minister.
The people in eastern Aleppo are starving. Their water supply too was bombed a week ago. We must ask ourselves how a minimum of humanitarian aid can be delivered to the suffering population under the existing conditions, said Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
The only option is for the parties to the conflict to give limited guarantees to assure the safe passage of humanitarian aid convoys and guarantee that helpers will not be attacked and killed, he said. Safe access to eastern Aleppo must be created for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, said the minister.
On Wednesday (5 October) Frank-Walter Steinmeier met with the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, in Berlin. They discussed what could be done to launch a process capable of stemming the violence, facilitating humanitarian access and making a political process conceivable once again.
The German government has repeatedly criticised the airstrikes of the Russian air force, the Syrian regime and groups supported by Iran, and has called for an immediate return to the ceasefire. Russia, it has said, must make an appreciable and clear contribution to de-escalating the situation and, in the final analysis, to bringing about a political solution.
The use of chemical weapons, barrel and phosphorus bombs, targeted attacks on medical facilities and staff, and on UN aid convoys cannot be accepted, any more than the policy of using starvation as a weapon.