The Joint Special Envoy of the United Nations and the League of Arab States for the Syrian Crisis, Lakhdar Brahimi, hopes that the next round of Syrian talks in Geneva will be more productive.

The Joint Special Envoy of the United Nations and the League of Arab States for the Syrian Crisis, Lakhdar Brahimi, hopes that the next round of Syrian talks in Geneva will be more productive.

“I hope that we will try…to draw some lessons about what we did and see if we can organize ourselves better for the next session. I think that’s enough for a beginning,” Brahimi said on Thursday, January 30.

He expressed hope that when the talks resume, presumably in February, “we will be able to have a more structured discussion.”

After a “tense but rather promising” meeting between the Syrian government and opposition negotiators on January 30, Brahimi said that the first round of talks would end on January 31 with no serious breakthrough or “any real change in position” of either side.

The two sides agreed that “terrorism does exist in Syria and that is a very serious problem,” but no agreement was reached on how to deal with it. However, the delegations agreed to hold a moment of silence to honor victims of the crisis - “no matter which [side] they belong to,” Brahimi said.

“We haven’t noticed any major change, to be honest, in the two sides’ positions,” he said, adding he was deeply disappointed that there was no movement on allowing U.N. aid convoy into Homs, and on allowing civilians to leave the besieged city, cut off from supplies.

Brahimi said earlier this week he had expected no results from the first round of the Syrian talks.

He spoke of “quite large” gaps in the positions of the sides and said he did not “expect that we will achieve anything substantive.”

“I am very happy that we are still talking, but the ice is breaking slowly, but it is breaking,” Brahimi said.

He expressed confidence that Russia and the United States would exert more influence on both sides.