A peace plan agreed to last month by 20 nations meeting in Vienna sets a January 1 deadline for the start of negotiations between Assad’s government and opposition groups. He said 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.
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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad speaks during a TV interview in Damascus, Syria in this still image … Internal opposition groups disagree, as do Assad’s main backers Tehran and Moscow.
Under a deal struck last month in Vienna, government and rebel negotiators would have six months to form a transitional government and 18 months to organise national elections.
Egypt has welcomed the talks held in Saudi Arabia.
State Department Spokesman John Kirby said Friday’s meeting seeks to “better define” what a political transition in Syria would look like and how a cease-fire could be implemented and monitored.
But it does not include the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, or Islamic State, which are among the main players opposing Assad.
But the diplomats remained divided over a resolution that the U.N. Security Council was expected to adopt just after the talks endorsing the process.
“We need to make sure the political process is irreversible in the face of this severe threat posed by global terrorism”, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said as he headed into the meeting at a NY hotel.
Ghadbian also said a comprehensive solution to the conflict requires “the removal of all foreign troops from Syria, all of them”, including Russian Federation, which began airstrikes there in September. They are fine tuning the text and hope to vote this afternoon. “Putin doesn’t respect our president”.
The members of the body are representatives of political opposition groups inside and outside Syria.
But the United States appears to have already made its own compromises in the search for peace.
On Thursday, Hijab, who defected from Assad’s government in 2012, got the backing of more than two thirds of the 34 delegates from movements called to Riyadh by world powers in a bid to unite them and settle years of wrangling and rivalries.
It was only after Tuesday’s talks with Kerry that Russian Federation, which had previously been cautious about convening another meeting of the Syrian Support Group, agreed to take part.
“We emphasized today that the United States and its partners are not seeking regime change, as it is known, in Syria”, Kerry said Tuesday at the Kremlin after talks with Putin.
Assad, in his interview with Dutch television, turned sarcastic when asked whether he was comforted that the West’s stances on his departure were seemingly softening.
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More than 250,000 people have died since Syria’s conflict erupted in March 2011, and millions more have fled their homes.
