While Saudi Arabia is hosting talks on identifying moderate Syrian opposition representatives, Jordan is leading a separate effort to help world powers reach a consensus on which Syrian opposition groups are considered terrorist groups and which groups are considered moderate.
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Saudi Arabia is a main backer of the opposition and in recent months stepped up efforts to bring about an end to the conflict. But diplomatic efforts are growing to find a political resolution to Syria’s conflict, which has cost the lives of more than 250,000 people and force millions to leave their homes. A bigger task may be persuading Riyadh’s allies to accept any outcome from the talks. Special forces soldiers with body armour and assault rifles manned checkpoints.
The group also raises money through other means, including imposing taxes on residents in areas under its control and from selling looted antiquities.
Undaunted, the Kurdish YPG and other factions have chose to hold their own conference in the Hasakeh Province, saying they’re also inviting Assyrian Christian groups and some secular Arab factions that were excluded from the Saudi talks.
“It is not all-encompassing”. This meeting is only for the Syrian opposition. “The whole thing has been very acrimonious, and it looks like a Saudi-Turkish wish-list”. Russian Federation and Iran have been Assad’s strongest supporters since the crisis began in March 2011 while Saudi Arabia and Turkey have backed factions trying to remove the Syrian president from power.
Haytham Manna, an activist in exile, said he would not attend the Riyadh meeting because it included “people who support an Islamic emirate”.
Among the nations that took part in the Vienna meeting were the United States, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.
For Saudi Arabia, Syria has been secondary to Yemen this year as the main cockpit in an overarching struggle for regional influence with Iran, but the ruling Al Saud continue to regard the Syrian civil war as a pivotal battlefield in the rivalry.
The YPG has been the most successful group fighting the Islamic State group and captured scores of towns and villages from the extremists over the past year.
On Tuesday, Riyadh is scheduled to host Syria’s primary political opposition factions, including 20 members of the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition.
World powers meeting in Vienna want formal talks to begin between the Syrian government and opposition by January.
Participants invited to the Riyadh meeting include Islamist factions Islam Army and Ahrar al-Sham, a group whose founders had links to al Qaeda.
The invitees do not include those considered to be “terrorist”, such as the Islamic State group and Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Al-Nusra Front.
On a visit to Kurdish-controlled Erbil in the north of Iraq, Steinmeier pledged continued military assistance for the Kurdish peshmerga fighters – a key ally so far on the ground against the so-called “Islamic State”.
The Riyadh meeting is also “an attempt to establish a unified political structure between the recognised political opposition coalition and the armed opposition as a whole”, the analyst said.
Speaking of “core differences” over Assad’s fate, Nashar said he feared that “some groups close to states supporting the regime, could demand that Assad stays during the transition period”. “We can not negotiate before agreeing in principle and having a date for the departure of Assad”.
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The Syrian National Coalition, headed by Khaled Khoja, aims to replace Syria’s current leadership with a transitional government after achieving worldwide recognition.
