[OUTLINE] Staffan de Mistura announced Wednesday he will resign as UN envoy to Syria, becoming the third person to quit the post after years of fruitless efforts to end the country's war.
De Mistura, who said he was leaving for "purely personal reasons", organised nine rounds of indirect negotiations in Geneva and Vienna between the warring parties, without results.
The war, which broke out in March 2011, has left 360,000 dead and displaced more than half of the population, millions of whom have fled the country. |