The United Nations Security Council did not discuss the draft, but British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said the members are “aware of the Russian proposal”. “Armenpress” reports about this, citing TASS website. The Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman said on Tuesday that Moscow would be concentrating on this at the meeting.
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The plan called for setting up a constitutional commission to draft Syrian political reforms, and specified that Assad would not be allowed to chair that commission.
“Within the framework of discussion on the regional agenda, an exchange of opinions continued on the ways of settlement in Syria”.
Moscow presented a document before the United Nations that proposes a constitutional reform process in Syria, lasting 18 months, to be followed by presidential elections.
The telephone conversation was initiated by Russian Federation.
For starters, Russian Federation appeared ambivalent toward Assad as recently as last week.
“Our preparations for the Vienna meeting are based on the document that was adopted on October 30”, she said, referring to the previous meeting in Vienna.
One of the main topics for discussion at the G20 summit which will be held on November 15-16 in Antalya will be the situation in Syria and the struggle against the terrorist group Islamic State. Equally, many rebel groups fight alongside the al-Qaeda offshoot Jabhat al-Nusra, which has proven among the most battle-hardy.
Moscow would really prefer the Russian and the US-led coalition air forces not to confine their attacks to ISIS, but extend them also to Syrian rebel groups.
It would blast Islamic State and other Islamist militant groups for widespread rights abuses. “The arms and ammunition which our pilots determined as their target, they received it from various sources, but including from the so-called Syrian moderate opposition, which was trained in camps in Jordan and Turkey with money from the United States”.
Presidential elections are now slated for 2021 and parliamentary elections are set for the coming spring, but the Russian plan would have both elections take place simultaneously, immediately following the approval of the constitution.
The document said key opposition members should be part of the process, and did not rule out Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s participation in the next election. Assad was elected to a new seven-year term in 2014 elections that the opposition dismissed as a sham because of the impact of the civil war. This provision applies not only to the U.S. and Saudi Arabia with regard to rebel groups, but also to Russian Federation and Iran as sponsors of the Syrian army. Information Minister Omra al-Zoubi took the occasion to call on all Syrians who are fighting the government “to drop their weapons and surrender to the state”, adding that the government does not seek revenge.
“The Syrian leadership lives in a reality of its own”.
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The momentum generated in Vienna “needs to not be missed”, Staffan de Mistura told reporters in NY ahead of a new round of high-level talks due on Saturday in the Austrian capital. “But then again, we need to see how it all proceeds”.
