Neither the Syrian government nor the opposition had been invited to take part in the one-day conference in the Austrian capital, which for the first time included Iran, Assad’s staunchest backer – despite objections from its bitter rival Saudi Arabia.
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At global peace talks in Vienna on Friday, Moscow said it wanted opposition groups to participate in future discussions on the Syria crisis and exchanged a list of 38 names with Saudi Arabia. Moscow is opposed to Western position that Assad should go, warning that “regime change” in Syria could become a global-scale disaster.
In an apparent effort to set the stage for transition talks, a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman said on Tuesday that Moscow does not consider it a matter of principle that Syrian President Bashar Assad should stay in power. “It is the beginning of a political process”, said Irina Zvyagelskaya, a Middle East analyst at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
In September, Russian Federation began carrying out airstrikes against opposition fighters in Syria, hitting Islamic State militants and other rebel groups, including U.S.-backed, anti-Assad forces.
The participants – who did not include representatives of the Syrian government or its opponents – agreed to ask the United Nations to broker a peace deal between the regime and the opposition to clear the way for a new Constitution and elections.
“We are in practically daily contact with various representatives of the Syrian opposition”, she added, without elaborating on specific groups.
“Such close cooperation will allow us to unite the efforts of the government troops with other patriotic forces in Syria that used to be in the opposition and act as a united front against the common enemy – global terrorism”, the defence ministry said.
The SNC has been accused of slipping into virtual irrelevance on the battlefield in Syria as Islamist and Kurdish groups have grown stronger. While Republican lawmakers at Wednesday’s hearing pressed Obama administration officials to bomb more frequently, Democrats questioned whether sending USA special forces to Syria will amount to a “slippery slope” of ever-increasing American involvement in the civil war, now in its fifth year.
While Moscow asserts that its military campaign in Syria is aggressively targeting the Islamic State, a top U.S. State Department official said Wednesday that as much as 90 percent of strikes carried out by the Russian fighter jets over the past month have actually hit moderate opposition rebels groups in the war-torn nation.
Earlier Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s office said the leader discussed the situation in Syria in a telephone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and that both men were ready to continue political dialogue.
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Elsewhere, the Observatory said a Kurdish-Arab alliance had advanced against ISIL in the north-eastern province of Hassakeh.
