DAVOS, Switzerland – The opposing sides won’t initially meet face-to-face in planned Syria peace talks in Geneva next week, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday, a new sign of obstacles that remain in the latest diplomatic push to end the conflict.
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Russia will back an alternative Syrian opposition delegation to negotiate with Syria’s government at peace talks in Geneva later this month if the existing opposition team is not reformed or boycotts the talks, a Russian diplomat said on Thursday (Friday NZ Time). The role of Kurdish groups is also in dispute.
The question of exactly who will represent the divided Syrian opposition at the talks has proven vexing. Why do they want the Russian airstrikes to stop and not the U.S. airstrikes to stop?
After that meeting, Lavrov said the US and Russian Federation agreed that the Syria talks should not be postponed until next month.
“The process will begin on the 25th and they will get together and see where we are”, Kerry added. “We understand that. We disagreed on how we would manage it”, he said.
US Secretary of State John Kerry insists the talks must go ahead next week.
Iran’s foreign minister has said it was up to the U.N.to decide who represents the opposition, but he said 10 delegates at a recent opposition gathering in Saudi Arabia were members of al Qaeda – one of three groups he said must be barred.
Kerry said any delay in the U.N.-led negotiations would be due to the sending of invitations to participants.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is to visit Paris next week, Fabius said, after arriving in Saudi Arabia from Abu Dhabi where he attended the World Future Energy Summit on Monday.
Staffan de Mistura, the U.N.’s special envoy for Syria, downplayed the disagreements as not unusual in the run-up to such a session.
Mohammed Alloush, political leader of the Saudi-backed Jaish al-Islam will be the opposition’s main negotiator, the coalition’s general coordinator Riad Hijab announced in a press conference in Riyadh.
“It is likely the 25th may slip by a few days for practical reasons”, said Jessy Chahine, a spokeswoman for de Mistura.
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The world body said on Monday it would not issue invitations to the talks between Syria´s government and opposition until major powers pushing the peace process reached agreement on which rebel representatives should attend. “We will not accept attempts by foreign parties to support a particular group at the expense of another, make proposals meant to challenge the credibility and mandate of the Supreme Commission for Negotiations, or to inject individuals in the form of a so-called third delegation, justifying their presence under unfounded pretexts merely to disrupt the political process and prolong the fighting in the name of combating terrorism”.
