Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Abdel Al-Jubeir has issued a fresh call for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down through negotiations or else be forcibly removed from power, as Syrian opposition groups held talks in the Saudi capital Riyadh.
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The Syrian opposition figures meeting in Riyadh are trying to form a unified front ahead of proposed peace talks with the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
US Secretary of State John Kerry welcomed the declaration.
However, one powerful insurgent faction pulled out of the talks to protest the role given to groups it said are close to the Syrian government.
The scheduled January meeting is the result of a road map agreed to in Vienna last month by world powers including the United States and Russian Federation, as well as Iran and Saudi Arabia.
In the biggest diplomatic push yet to resolve Syria’s almost five-year civil war, top diplomats from 17 countries – including backers and opponents of Assad – agreed in Vienna on a roadmap for the country.
Charles Lister, a fellow at the Brookings Institute Doha, reported sources in Riyadh as saying that the body had been expanded to 33 after an extra seat was added for the armed opposition, leaving them with a third of the total votes.
The opposition groups called on the United Nations and global community to force the regime to take “goodwill measures” before negotiations can begin.
The measures include the ending of regime sieges on towns and districts to allow the entry of humanitarian aid, a halt to executions, the release of political detainees and the creation of conditions to allow for the return of refugees. They established a “supreme council” made up of 32 opposition members and representatives of rebel factions that would later pick the 15 people who would negotiate on behalf of the opposition.
The meeting chose to set up a “Higher Negotiations Authority” to direct the opposition’s participation in the proposed talks with the regime early next year, and to select the negotiating team.
More than 100 opposition representatives – ranging from secularist politicians tolerated by al-Assad’s regime, to hardline Islamist rebels – attended the Riyadh conference.
“Intense Saudi pressure was able to overcome initial misapprehensions but it remains to be seen whether the fears and concerns will not re-emerge rapidly”, Bitar told AFP.
Representatives of Ahrar al-Sham, a Salafist Islamist group that has cooperated closely with al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria in the past, later returned to the conference amid signs that the group was split over participating in the process.
Also on Thursday, a Kurdish-Arab coalition fighting ISIL in northern Syria announced the creation of a political wing.
Al-Jubeir repeated Saudi Arabia’s longstanding position that Syria’s president must go.
The US has approached the hard-line Ahrar al-Sham with caution, neither discounting including the group in the future of Syria nor opening up to it.
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Saudi King Salman, who received the Syrian delegation in al-Awja Palace after the end of the talks, said he hopes this step would lead to security, stability and justice in Syria. “Either he leaves through negotiations and this is the fastest, easiest and best for everybody, or he will leave through fighting because the Syrian people reject that this man stays in power”, he said.
