Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, right, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry address the media before a meeting in Vienna, Austria, Saturday Nov.14, 2015.
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Al Jazeera’s Jamjoom said that refugees from Syria and Iraq, whom he had spent time with over the past two weeks in Greece, were concerned that attacks in Europe would further harm their plight.
A British Government source said: “The G20 offers an opportunity for a number of the important players in Syria to be there together and to have a few discussions about the way forward, following on from the foreign ministers’ discussions in Vienna”.
“We have also come to a mutual agreement to conduct a fair election in 18 months”, he said.
The ceasefire does not apply to terrorist organizations in the region, including Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and Al-Nusra Front. BRICS countries welcomed the first meeting of the organisation’s working group on fighting the corruption, which is due in early November.
“We still still differ on what happens to Bashar al-Assad”, Kerry told a joint news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and United Nations special envoy Staffan de Mistura after talks in Vienna.
Lavrov said Jordan would oversee a process that would identify which groups should be considered for identification as terrorists.
More than 250,000 people have been killed in the Syria conflict since March 2011.
“I can not say… that we are on the threshold of a comprehensive agreement, no”, said Kerry, who arrived in the Austrian capital on Friday afternoon for preliminary talks with his Saudi, Turkish and United Nations counterparts. There were no Syrian representatives at the talks.
The peace talks involving 20 countries and organisations meeting in Vienna however remained deeply divided on the future of Assad, whose main regional ally has been Iran.
However, Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi lashed out at the Saudi official for his statements, saying Riyadh is not qualified to participate in efforts to resolve the crisis in Syria as the kingdom is shedding the blood of people elsewhere.
Under the plan, talks between the government and opposition forces would start by the end of the year, aiming at a ceasefire, the formation of a transitional government and new elections within 18 months.
Comments from the two also reflected continued differences on the causes of the terrorist threat emanating from Syria.
Unless world powers can offer the Syrian people a few kind of incentive, it is unclear how the plan would work, said Anthony Cordesman, a security and defense scholar at the Center for Strategic and worldwide Studies in Washington.
European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the countries sitting around the table have “almost all experienced the same pain, the same terror”, citing the recent Russian plane disaster in Egypt and suicide bombings in Beirut and Turkey.
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The Vienna talks are expected to focus on identifying Syria’s moderate opposition groups, as well as those that are considered terrorist entities.
