Earlier it had been reported that the committee would send a small representation, headed by chairman Riad Hijab, for “pre-talks” on implementing demands for an end to bombardments, sieges and blockades of insurgent-held areas in the war-torn country.
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The invitations have been sent and preparations are underway at the U.N.’s Geneva headquarters where the first Syria peace talks in two years are scheduled to begin.
The Syrian government is clawing back territory from rebels with military help from Iran and Russian Federation.
But de Mistura has not invited the Syrian Kurdish PYD party, which is affiliated to the Kurdish YPG militia that controls wide areas of northern and northeastern Syria and has become an important partner in the U.S.-led war on Islamic State.
On Thursday, UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura appeared in a video message directly addressing the Syrian people, saying that the talks were expected to start “in the next few days”.
Taken together, Thursday’s last-minute diplomatic wrangling leaves a cloud of uncertainty over negotiations aimed at ending Syria’s brutal five-year civil war.
Nevertheless, the Supreme Negotiating Committee will not be the only representative of the opposition.
The Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee, meeting in Riyadh, said it would not attend the Geneva negotiations until an agreement was reached on aid entering besieged towns.
The UN Security Council resolution 2254 of December 18, 2015 stipulated the launch of the intra-Syrian negotiations in January.
The source said the opposition had received de Mistura’s response late on Wednesday and that it was “somewhat positive”.
But delegate Monzer Makhos told AFP that members “would not be there” in Geneva for the planned start of talks “as we have yet to make a decision”.
“Tomorrow will probably the start will be with those who attend but it has no value”, Monzer Makhous told Al-Hadath.
The immediate cause of the postponement of the talks was a failure to agree on which groups should be invited as representatives of the Syrian opposition. But Turkey, which has its own restive Kurdish population and views the group as a terrorist organization, strongly opposes any PYD participation and threatened to withdraw its support for the talks if it is invited.
The United States on Wednesday urged Syria s reluctant rebel and opposition groups to attend UN-mediated peace talks with Bashar al-Assad s regime without preconditions.
De Mistura is certain that the stake on indirect talks in such a situation will give him the needed flexibility. His two predecessors – Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi – both quit. Mr Amir-Abdollahian called on Saudi Arabia to stop its actions which he said increased tension in the region.
In the three days since the talks were rescheduled, the Syrian government and its allies have made further advances in western Syria, building on gains achieved in recent months with the backing of Russian air power. However, the opposition, a wide-ranging coalition of Islamist and secular fighting groups on the ground, long-exiled politicians, and regime defectors, is still considering its position.
The talks could go ahead with independent opposition groups, but the effort to reach a negotiated solution would be seriously weakened without the Saudi-formed committee, which claims to represent more than 100 groups.
Many Syrian activists have taken to social media to condemn the talks.
Another Syrian opposition figure said that the peace talks are unlikely to begin on Friday for “technical reasons”, adding that his group has named a second opposition list to be part of the talks.
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They have also pushed for the exclusion of the Jaish al-Islam rebel group, calling it a terrorist group.
