The resolution also calls for the "rapid, safe and unhindered" delivery of humanitarian aid throughout Syria. And it anticipates a meeting of the Syrian government and opposition representative in Kazakhstan's capital Astana in late January.
The resolution's final text dropped an endorsement of the Syria cease-fire agreement reached Thursday, simply taking note of it but welcoming and supporting Russian-Turkish efforts to end the violence. Western members of the council sought the last-minute changes to the draft resolution to clarify the U.N.'s role and the meaning of the agreement brokered by Moscow and Ankara.
U.S. deputy ambassador Michele Sison said the Obama administration strongly supports a cease-fire and "unfettered humanitarian access," but she expressed regret that additional documentation to the agreement brokered by Russia and Turkey with details about its implementation have not yet been made public.
Meanwhile on the ground in Syria, the opposition warned on Saturday that cease-fire violations by pro-regime forces threatened to undermine the two-day-old agreement intended to pave the way for talks between the regime and the opposition in the new year.
Airstrikes pounded opposition-held villages and towns in the strategically-important Barada Valley outside Damascus, activists said, prompting rhe opposition to threaten to withdraw their compliance with a nationwide truce brokered by Russia and Turkey last week.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group also reported the attacks. It added that pro-regime forces had advanced against the opposition in the eastern Ghouta region outside Damascus, in a clear violation of the cease-fire.
The opposition also accused the regime of signing a different version of the agreement to the one they signed in the Turkish capital of Ankara, further complicating the latest diplomatic efforts to bring an end to six years of war.
Nearly 50,000 people died in the conflict in 2016, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which maintains networks of contacts on all sides of the war. More than 13,000 of them were civilians, according to the Observatory. Various estimates have put the war's overall toll at around 400,000 dead.
If the truce holds, the government and the opposition will be expected to meet for talks for the first time in nearly a year in the Kazakh capital of Astana in the second half of January. Those talks will be mediated by Russia, Turkey and Iran, though Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin has said other key players including the United States are welcome to participate.
Churkin said after Saturday's vote that the Astana talks will be the first face-to-face negotiations between the Syrian regime and opposition and he expressed hope that 2017 will see a political settlement of the conflict that has claimed over 250,000 lives.
The Kremlin meanwhile said Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani confirmed their commitment to negotiations in Astana, in a phone conversation between the two leaders.
Iran and Russia have provided crucial military and diplomatic support to Bashar Assad throughout the conflict.
The developments follow months of talks between Ankara and Moscow that culminated in a cease-fire agreement that went into effect Friday at midnight.
Buta statement issued by the opposition complained that the regime's version of the agreement signed in Ankara last week had deleted "a number of essential and non-negotiable points."
It said the opposition had agreed to a cease-fire encompassing the whole of Syria, without any exceptions to region or faction.
The truce, largely intact in its second day, excludes terrorist groups such as Daesh and former Al-Qaeda affiliate the Fateh al-Sham Front, previously known as the Al-Nusra Front.
Turkey and Russia, which brokered the truce, have said the talks in the Kazakh capital Astana aim to supplement UN-backed peace efforts, not replace them.
The UN itself convened peace talks last February in Geneva between Syrian regime and opposition representatives.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitor of the war, said that most of the country remained calm on Saturday.
