“We will insist that UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura invites them”, Qadri Jamil said. “At this moment, there is no reason to repeat ourselves with de Mistura”, she told reporters outside of the United Nations headquarters in Geneva.
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China hopes the Syrian government and opposition delegations will participate in the Geneva talks without preconditions, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said Monday.
De Mistura kicked off what he called a second day of peace talks by hosting a government delegation for the second time since Friday.
During a visit to the UAE on Tuesday, Sergey Lavrov said the inclusion of Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham in the opposition negotiating team was “realistic” given the dynamics in Syria, but said their participation did not mean Russian Federation recognised the groups.
“De Mistura had a feeling, his own interpretation that actually the conditions for declaring the official beginning of the talks had been created”.
“We also asked for the names of participants and the agenda of indirect talks…”
Bashar Ja’afari, Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the UN, speaks to journalists following a Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, 16 September 2014, United Nations.
The chief negotiator of the High Negotiations Committee, the main opposition group, meanwhile said he was not optimistic about the talks because the situation has not changed on the ground.
The U.N.-sponsored talks between the Syrian government and opposition started officially this week after being delayed for a week over the rebel demands.
The Advisory Board will allow Syrian women to articulate their concerns and ideas covering all topics discussed during the talks, and present recommendations to the UN Special Envoy for consideration.
Scheduled meetings come against a backdrop of stalemates as two past initiatives failed to make headway in solving the political crisis pitching Syrian president Bashar al-Assad against anti-government forces, with terrorist factions such as the Islamic State (IS) and Al-Nusra also in the mix.
The talks are aimed at ending a five-year conflict that has killed 250,000 people and displaced millions, leaving vast areas of the country in ruins.
On Sunday, the extremist Sunni group said it was a behind multiple bombings at a revered Shiite shrine south of Damascus that monitors said killed more than 70 people.
He said the discussions on Sunday night had involved Saleh Muslim, head of Syria’s most powerful Kurdish party, the Democratic Union Party.
As NPR’s Peter Kenyon reports, “The talks, already delayed, now face further holdups as an opposition coalition backed by Saudi Arabia is demanding an end to airstrikes before it negotiates”.
A senior Western diplomat said the opposition had shown up in the Swiss city so as not to play “into the hands of the regime” by staying away. Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, speaking to a news briefing in Geneva as Syria peace talks were being held said: “In the case of Syria, we are there to remind everyone that where there are allegations that reach the threshold of war crimes or crimes against humanity that amnesties are not permissible”.
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“There will be a lot of posturing, we know that, a lot of walk-outs and walk-ins because a bomb has fallen or because someone has done an attack, and you will see that happening”, he said last week.
