UN eyes Montreux for Syria peace conference

GENEVA — Organizers are considering moving the opening of January's Syria peace conference to the other end of Lake Geneva because of a luxury watch fair.

UN spokeswoman Corinne Momal-Vanian said yesterday the Jan. 22 start of the meeting on Syria may need to be moved to the Swiss town of Montreux because of insufficient hotel rooms in Geneva.

"It is certainly a possibility that is being considered very seriously," Momal-Vanian told reporters.

The timing for the "Geneva 2" conference aimed at ending Syria's civil war was set by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon after high-level discussions involving the United States and Russia, Syria's key ally.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and more than two dozen other foreign ministers are expected to deliver speeches during the first day of the conference. The actual negotiations between President Bashar Assad's government and armed Syrian opposition groups would begin the second day.

But the first three days of the planned conference overlap with the 24th edition of the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie, a luxury watch fair that draws more than 12,000 people to Geneva, a global center of watchmaking. Geneva's hotel rooms are booked.

Momal-Vanian noted that the Syrian negotiations — for which there is no fixed end date — would still be conducted at the historic Palais des Nations in Geneva that serves as the UN's European headquarters.