The opposition was meeting on Tuesday to decide whether to attend the talks which United Nations envoy Staffan de Mistura aims to open in Geneva on Friday, ushering in months of negotiations with delegates in separate rooms.
Advertisement
The priorities would be establishing a cease-fire, supplying humanitarian aid and tackling Daesh, de Mistura said. Turkey argues the group should be excluded beacuse the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party is tied to the Turkish Kurdish Worker’s Party, which is fighting Ankara for autonomy.
Meanwhile, UN Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown has warned that 2.5 million children could be displaced as refugees from Syria by the end of 2016, adding that the only way to ensure they remain in the region is to provide stability through a new plan for double-shift education.
He reiterated USA support for the opposition, following comments from opposition officials who said they felt like they were being pressured into the talks. He said: “We want to make sure that when and if we start, to start at least on the right foot”. “It will be uphill anyway”.
The first part of the talks will last for two or three weeks after which a date for the next round of talks will be decided.
The Syrian opposition’s chief negotiator to the talks, Mohammed Alloush, has told Al Jazeera he’s unhappy with the way his delegation has been treated.
Salim al-Muslat, a spokesman for the Syrian opposition’s High Negotiation Committee (HNC), accused Russian Federation and the Syrian government of throwing obstacles in the path of talks that were originally due to begin in Geneva on Monday.
Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups should start by the end of January as planned but that the invitation list remains a sticking point.
Participation by IS and the al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, al-Nusra Front, had been ruled out, he said, but discussions about other rebel groups were continuing.
“The talks are going to take place soon, hopefully, hopefully, hopefully…”
But they have been delayed again, over who should represent the opposition.
Earlier in the day, US Secretary of State John Kerry said he hoped for “clarity” within 24 to 48 hours on Syrian peace talks that were supposed to have started in Geneva on Monday, and that it was better to delay a few days than to have them crumble at the start.
“We are trying to make absolutely certain that when they start that everybody is clear about roles and what is happening, so you don’t go there and wind up with a question mark or a failure”, he said.
Syria has been mired in a civil war since 2011, with government forces loyal to President Bashar Assad fighting a number of opposition factions and extremist groups.
Advertisement
He described the meeting with the top USA diplomat as “neither comfortable, nor positive” and said Kerry used “all his efforts to insist on the necessity of us attending”. “These are things you hear as people are anxious”, he said. “Maybe it’s a pressure thing or an internal political thing, but that is not the situation”, he said.
