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On 6 July in Paris, Lithuanian Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Asta Skaisgirytė Liauškienė is participating in the third meeting of the Group of Friends of the Syrian People aimed at reaching a peaceful settlement for the crisis in Syria.

Participants of the meeting will seek to mount the pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and will once again support the efforts of Joint Special Envoy of the UN and the Arab League Kofi Annan to try to end the attacks of the Syrian government against its civilians and his peace plan for a political transition in Syria.

The meeting will be attended by representatives of the Syrian opposition and of the Syrian National Council. The Second Conference of the Group of Friends of the Syrian People was held in Istanbul on  April 1. The meeting recognized the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) as a legitimate representative of all Syrians and an umbrella organization for Syrian opposition groups, noting the council as the leading interlocutor of the Syrian opposition with the international community. The opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) elected a Kurdish activist Abdelbaset Sayda as its new president in the beginning of June. It is hoped that Sayda, as the consensus candidate, could overcome the mounting splits, also attract more religious and other Syrian minority groups to join forces with the council.

Lithuania and other Nordic and Baltic states drafted a joint statement on the situation in Syria. The international conference will bring together representatives from more than 100 countries and international organisations, including the U.S., EU, also the Arab leadership and other heads of state and government, foreign ministers, and heads of international organizations. Russia and China again refused to participate in the meeting of the Group of Friends of the Syrian People.

The first Conference of the Group of Friends of the Syrian People was held in Tunis on February 24, 2012, and the second took place on April 1, 2012, in Istanbul.

The UN reports that the Syrian regime’s brutal actions over the past sixteen months since the beginning of the uprising have led to the death of more than 10 thousand civilians. Tens of thousands of Syrians were forced to flee their homes.