* UN rights investigators urge Security Council to act
* Call for warring parties to resume Geneva peace talks
* Russia says Kurds should be involved in peace talks
(Recasts with Russia comments)
By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA, June 21 (Reuters) - Russia called on Tuesday for a
swift resumption of stalled Syrian peace talks, saying it was
the only way to halt "massive violations" of human rights
perpetrated in the five-year-old conflict.
Russia, a strong ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad,
launched air strikes in September to support the Syrian army and
its militia allies battling rebels and Islamic State fighters,
and is backing an offensive on rebel-held areas of the northern
city of Aleppo.
It supports proposals for a political settlement under which
some Syrian opposition figures would be brought into a Syrian
unity government - steps which rebels and their foreign backers
say do not go far enough.
"The only way to find a solution to the Syria crisis and
stop the massive violations is to promptly convene talks with a
broad spectrum of Syrian opposition which includes Syria Kurds,"
Aleksei Goltiaev, senior counselor at Russia's mission to UN in
Geneva, told the U.N. Human Rights Council.
"Only Syrians, without diktat, have the right to decide
(their future)," Goltiaev said.
The main Syrian Kurdish political group, the PYD, was left
out of Geneva peace talks which ground to a halt in late April
without results.
Goltiaev's comments followed an appeal by United Nations war
crimes investigators for world powers to pressure the warring
sides to return to the negotiating table.
Paulo Pinheiro, chair of the U.N. independent commission of
inquiry on Syria, said that the Syrian government was conducting
daily air strikes, while militant groups including Islamic State
and the Nusra Front also carried out indiscriminate attacks.
"We need all states to insist time and time again that
influential states and the (U.N.) Security Council
unconditionally support the political process," Pinheiro said.
U.S. ambassador Keith Harper did not refer to resumption of
talks, but called for Damascus to release some of the "tens of
thousands" of imprisoned Syrians. Many are subjected to
"torture, sexual violence and denial of fair trials", he said.
Pinheiro said schools, hospitals, mosques and water stations
"are all being turned into rubble" and tens of thousands of
people were trapped between frontlines and international
borders.
Syria's ambassador Hussam Aala accused regional powers of
"supporting terrorism" and "causing the failure of intra-Syrian
talks in Geneva".
He said schools and hospitals in Aleppo were being destroyed
and civilians killed by missiles provided by Turkey and Qatar to
the Nusra Front, al Qaeda's Syrian branch.
In a report last week, the U.N. investigators said that
Islamic State is committing genocide against the Yazidis in
Syria and Iraq to destroy the religious community of 400,000
people through killings, sexual slavery and other crimes.
ID:nL8N1981U1
"As we speak, Yazidi women and girls are still sexually
enslaved in Syria, subjected to brutal rapes and beatings,"
Pinheiro said on Tuesday.
Vian Dakhil, the only female Yazidi member of the Iraqi
parliament, told a news briefing in Geneva: "We need the
Security Council to bring this report to the Criminal Court."