GENEVA: A new round of talks aimed at ending the war in Syria will begin in Geneva on March 14 and will last no longer than 10 days, the UN mediator said Wednesday.

Staffan de Mistura said participants would begin arriving in the coming days and that he would be having some informal talks over the weekend.

“But the substantive deeper part of it... will be on Monday,” he said, saying the negotiations would “last not beyond March 24,” when there would be a break.

“There will be a recess of a few days, a week perhaps, 10 days” before the talks resume, he said.

“Having a timetable and a time limit is healthy for everyone.”

The UN is hoping to restart peace talks that collapsed last month, building on a cease-fire that has led to the first significant decline in violence in Syria’s nearly five-year civil war.

“The cessation of hostilities... is still holding, and it is making a direct impact on the lives of millions of Syrians inside the country,” UN humanitarian coordinator for Syria Yacoub El Hillo told reporters.

As in the previous round, the negotiations will take the form of “proximity talks” with de Mistura shuttling between the different sides.

The Syrian regime on Monday confirmed it would attend the Geneva talks, while the opposition has said it was still considering the matter despite a major lull in fighting.

Meanwhile, Syria’s first man in space says European nations should help remove President Bashar Assad from office to bring an end to the refugee crisis.

Gen. Mohammed Faris, a 64-year-old Soviet-trained cosmonaut, fled the civil war Syria in 2012 for Turkey to join the Syrian opposition, becoming one of his country’s highest-ranking defectors.

Faris, a refugee himself, told The Associated Press in an interview: “I tell Europe if you don’t want refugees, then you should help us get rid of this regime.”

Faris made history in 1987 when he became Syria’s first cosmonaut — and a national hero — spending almost eight days in space.

Now based in Istanbul, he gives talks at universities and schools on his experiences in space.