Date : 17/04/2012
By John Keating
PARIS, April 17 (KUNA) -- French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe intends to
invite at least 14 Foreign Ministers to Paris on Thursday to discuss the
situation in Syria, a diplomatic source said here Tuesday.
The source told KUNA that the invitations were still being worked on but
that agreement was already reached with Qatar, Germany, Holland and a couple
of other countries and that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would
"probably" attend.
The source said that France was also "working with Kuwait" to see if the
Foreign Minister could come.
The potential for a meeting in Paris Thursday is likely to be firmed up in
the coming hours and is viewed feasible as many of the ministers are at a NATO
meeting in Brussels and will be in the area.
The source also told KUNA that there was likely to be an official
announcement on the meeting Wednesday.
France already hosted Tuesday a meeting of 57 international delegations to
discuss sanctions against Syria and ways of making them more effective.
The participants, many of them from the "Friends of Syria" group, agreed to
improve coordination and exchange of technical data and also arrived at a
consensus for a second meeting of the "expert level" group in Washington next
month.
The Sanctions Group meeting stressed the need to be vigilant on the
implementation of sanctions, particularly in the oil and banking sector and
also stressed these punitive measures were not aimed at the Syrian population.
The group expressed support for the Arab League plan and the follow-up plan
by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan and urged the rapid implementation of these
measures with a view to a political transition in Syria. (end)
jk.bs
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