The absence of the Syrian Kurdish faction controlling large parts of northern Syria also complicated negotiations.
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Asked whether he would be willing to join negotiations called for by world powers by January 1, he said: “They want the Syrian government to negotiate with terrorists, something I don’t think anyone would accept in any country”. Iran condemned the meeting.
But the opposition groups insisted that “Bashar al-Assad and his aides quit power with the start of the transition period” set out by world powers in Vienna last month. Urayb al-Rintawi in Al-Dustur sees “collusion” rather than agreement between the disparate opposition factions.
There was also an agreement on creation of the team of negotiators to hold talks with Assad regime with a condition that membership of anyone in the team would cease to end upon joining the transitional government.
Not all groups present at the talks, however, were content with the terms of the proposed framework.
The opposition has been under intense pressure to sign up to the peace process.
In the Jordanian press, Tariq Masarwah of Al-Rai says the absence of key Kurdish and Islamist groups undermines the credibility of the Riyadh meeting.
“No, Russia is supplying weapons to the Syrian Arab Republic, to Syria’s legitimate authorities”, he said when asked whether Russia supplied arms to the so-called moderate opposition in Syria.
In addition, it criticised the failure to “support the Muslim identity of our people”.
Like the Iranian official media, he plays up reports of opposition disunity, in particular over the composition of a delegation for the next stage of talks.
The US has approached the hard-line Ahrar al-Sham with caution, neither discounting including the group in the future of Syria nor opening up to it.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told Russia’s RIA news agency Moscow will use the meeting to call for an “intensification of joint efforts” against terrorism.
Some 100 delegates began meeting on Wednesday under tight security at a luxury hotel in Riyadh, the first time a broad range of both political and armed factions from the Syrian opposition have sat at the same table. Those in attendance include members of the Syrian National Coalition and the Free Syrian Army. In many ways the SDF is a new front for an alliance among the same forces that have been fighting against IS together in the past.
Ahrar al-Sham said it faced “a religious and national duty to withdraw from the conference to protest its outcome”.
Assad insisted a majority of Syrians backed his rule and that he would not step down, as Syrian rebel groups and many Western powers demand.
Participants attend a conference held by the Democratic Forces of Syria in Derek, Syria on December 8, 2015.
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US State Department spokesman John Kirby said, however, that Ahrar al-Sham “were at the conference today” and that the US considered them one of the 116 participants that formed a consensus.
