UN envoy to Syria hopeful for truce

UN mediator in the Syrian conflict, Staffan de Mistura, has said that new opportunities are in sight to resolve the Syrian crisis, now in its fourth year, with "new factors" like the rise of Sunni radical group Islamic State coming into play, a leading British daily reported Tuesday.

The UN has called for "freeze zones" in the country, where more than 200,000 people have died since the conflict began in 2011.

Mistura told BBC that fresh truce measures may succeed due to the common threat imposed by the IS militants, as well as a growing weariness with the conflict.

The rise of IS was "a new factor which can turn into the possibility of looking at this conflict in a different way", Mistura said.

Rebel groups such as IS and the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front have been fighting among themselves, as well as against forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

Mistura said that rival groups that see IS and the Nusra Front as a common enemy were beginning to question if the conflict was "giving an opportunity to someone else to take advantage of it".

Moreover, he said, there was a growing realisation that attempts to win the conflict by force were not working and that the only losers in the war were the Syrian people.