France has been a key backer of moderate opposition forces battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and has been advising them on how to prepare for the Geneva talks.
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The Riyadh-backed grouping insists it should be the sole opposition delegation.
Only Syrians have been invited to peace talks in Geneva, the United Nations said Wednesday, in an apparent contradiction to Turkey’s suggestion that it would be included.
US Secretary of State John Kerry met with Committee members in Riyadh at the weekend and Washington has kept up the pressure on them to attend.
Syrian rebel groups have previously said they hold the Syrian government and Russian Federation responsible for any failure of talks.
As the parties involved in Syria’s five-year civil war prepare to meet in Geneva Friday, questions about the future of the Damascus regime and the role of opposition groups continue to divide the world. Hopes of some progress this time were raised after a meeting of the 17-country International Syria Support Group (ISSG) in Vienna in November, which was followed by a UN Security Council resolution calling for talks to start in January that would lead to a “credible” transitional government in place by July this year. “We have the right to have our own delegation”, Manna said.
Tensions have also flared over who would be invited to the talks, and the opposition has demanded confidence-building measures from the government on humanitarian issues.
The oppositions released on Tuesday a statement demanding genuine improvements on the ground before starting the negotiations. It represents a bloc that includes the Syrian National Coalition and numerous major rebel factions fighting in Syria.
The HNC has however repeatedly said the government and its allies must halt bombardments and lift blockades of besieged areas before it will join talks. While the group left open the possibility of its eventual participation, it said it awaits a reply from him on its conditions. Russian Federation is accused of killing hundreds of civilians with its air campaign, while Moscow claims zero civilian deaths.
Turkey opposes the PYD and its YPG armed wing because of its affiliation to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a group that waged a bloody separatist struggle in south-eastern Turkey for three decades.
In the chaotic run-up to the talks, the warring sides and their worldwide backers have bickered over who should be present and what should be discussed, with some threatening to boycott if their conditions are not met.
But several opposition figures who do not belong to the body told AFP on Tuesday they had been invited to the talks.
The source said the opposition had received de Mistura’s response late on Wednesday and that it was “somewhat positive”. “He was tasked with forming the delegations in a balanced way and in a way that represents all the elements of Syrian society”, she told Reuters.
The list of opposition groups invited to the talks on Friday are primarily groups backed by Saudi Arabia.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the Higher Negotiating Committee should be the primary negotiator for the rebels.
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Toner added that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)-controlled 98-kilometer stretch of the Turkey-Syria border was a “persistent problem” and that the USA was absolutely convinced that Turkey understood “the magnitude of the problem”.
