Arch-rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran announced they would attend worldwide talks in Vienna on Friday on the Syrian conflict, in what will be their first meeting to discuss the four-year-long war.
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“We have reviewed the invitation, and it was decided that the foreign minister would attend the talks”, Iranian foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said in a BBC News report. AP’s earlier story is below. Her quotes were carried by the official IRNA news agency.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius was set to speak with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on the phone later Wednesday ahead of worldwide talks on the Syrian crisis, a government spokesman said. The United States has said it could tolerate Assad during a short transition period, but that he would then have to exit the political stage.
PH: It is hard to say what is going on behind the scenes, but I think Russia’s continued presence in Syria, Iraq and its partnership with Iran has basically the U.S. realizing that Iran is a major partner, that is there to stay, and their participation is going to be critically important to any type of resolution within Syria.
Iran is a key supporter of Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose regime has been fighting Islamist militants and other rebel groups in a four-year civil war.
But Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, speaking October. 28 with British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond in Riyadh, said the Saudi government was persuaded by its worldwide partners to let Iran come as a “test” to see if it could play a constructive role.
The Islamic Republic has on numerous occasions insisted that a political solution is the only way out of the chaotic situation plaguing Syria. “The likely results will be to further radicalize the population, prolong the fighting, and perhaps strengthen the illusion on Assad’s part that he can maintain indefinitely his hold on power”.
But the latest shift is a recognition that Russian Federation and Iran may well be the two biggest voices in the discussion on who succeeds Mr Assad – if a political transition can be engineered – and leaving the Iranians out of the conversation was “simply ignoring reality”, said a senior U.S. diplomat.
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Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, who will be part of his country’s delegation to the gathering, made clear Wednesday that Tehran believes any resolution to the conflict can only be on Assad’s terms. While no one expects a breakthrough, the Vienna talks are the most serious attempt yet to put an end to a conflict that has killed a quarter of a million people and displaced millions of others, touching off a humanitarian crisis of spectacular proportions and unleashing Islamic extremists across the Middle East.
