It will endorse the previously agreed timetable for creating a transitional government in Syria and the holding of UN-monitored elections. Diplomats will then hope to travel the short distance to the U.N.to seek approval of the Security Council for the process.
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With their positions on Syria seeming to be moving closer together, the United States and Russian Federation are set to hold another round of diplomatic talks this week aimed at ending the Syrian civil war.
But a deal remained elusive on yesterday morning as talks among the 17 members of the so-called International Syria Support Group got underway at New York’s Palace Hotel.
US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, has been phoning the other 10 members of the council to brief them on the text.
The resolution does three things, which internationalize efforts to seek a political solution in Syria.
Diplomats remained divided over a resolution that the U.N. Security Council was expected to adopt just after the talks endorsing the process.
The Iranian foreign minister told The Associated Press that his country has seen “no lists we can agree upon” of Syrian opposition groups that should be included in peace negotiations, or of Syrian groups that should be considered terrorist organizations instead. Council diplomats said they hoped agreement on a text could be clinched.
Cairo has not called for Bashar al-Assad to leave office, and has reiterated its belief that a political solution is necessary to end the four-year conflict.
But an increasingly bloodied Russian Federation – now a target of ISIS – and growing US urgency in resolving the 5-year-old conflict whose chaos only strengthens the terror group, seems to provide some common ground for finding a resolution to the conflict. This would allow Russian, French and USA air-strikes against Islamic State to continue.
“You can’t defeat Daesh without also de-escalating the fight in Syria”, Kerry said in Moscow, using another name for ISIS.
The road map, which was agreed to last month by the ISSG during two previous rounds of minister-level talks in Vienna, calls for a ceasefire between Mr Al Assad’s forces and rebel groups excluding ISIL and Jabhat Al Nusra.
Earlier, the chief coordinator of opposition groups said they want a political transition without Assad. “There will be follow-up steps to set the criteria (for which are to be labelled terrorist groups)”.
U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby added that Jordan would give an update on its role in the process – drawing up a list of which “terrorist” groups should be blacklisted from talks.
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Foreign ministers from 17 countries, including Russia’s Sergei Lavrov, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and other European and Middle Eastern ministers, as well as top diplomats from regional rivals Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran, were in NY for the Syria meetings. “How the hell do you sit down for a peace process featuring compromise when one of the parties doesn’t accept the rules of the game and the other party’s constituency is being blown away on a daily basis?” The bulk of the anti-ISIL military campaign to date has been undertaken by an global coalition led by the USA, but Russia’s campaign of airstrikes from September, which have bolstered the Assad government, have also intermittently targeted ISIL.
