U.N. special envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura and the Syrian government delegation led by Syrian ambassador to the U.N., Bashar al-Jaafari, held their first meeting on Monday in Geneva.

The fresh round of U.N.-sponsored talks aimed at finding a political solution to the six-year war resumed.

More than 400,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the conflict, and the negotiations seek to bring the warring sides closer through discussion of four “baskets”: constitution, governance, terrorism and elections.

This new session is the seventh of a series of peace talks rounds which have been held in Switzerland for the past two years, with all of the previous ones resulting in scant progress.

Hours before the start of the talks, however, a U.S. – Russia-brokered ceasefire came into effect in southwest Syria and was still holding, in the first peace-making effort of the war by the U.S. government under President Donald Trump.