Crucial worldwide talks on the Syrian conflict in Vienna this weekend will focus on drawing up an opposition delegation to negotiate with President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, sources said Wednesday.
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In comments released by the Kremlin Friday, he dismissed the claims by the US and its allies that Russian warplanes have mostly targeted moderate opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad instead of their declared main target, the Islamic State group.
The Russian proposal calls for drafting a new constitution within 18 months that would be put to a popular referendum and be followed by an early presidential election. The text obtained by Reuters does not rule out Mr Assad’s participation in early presidential elections, something his enemies say is impossible if there is to be peace.
The discussions will bring together around 20 countries and global bodies to hammer out a roadmap for peace to end Syria’s more than four-year civil war, and diplomats said working level talks are set to begin in advance on Thursday. They praised the talks in Vienna talks as positive but reiterated that none of the political efforts have so far had any impact on the ground in Syria.
“The Syrian people have never accepted the dictatorship of Assad and they will not accept that it is reintroduced or reformulated in another way”, said Monzer Akbik, member of the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition.
“We are aware of the Russian proposals”, said Matthew Rycroft, the British ambassador to the United Nations. “It is for them to decide who is their leader”, said Rouhani.
At the initial talks in Vienna on October 30, the US, Russia, Iran and more than a dozen other nations agreed to launch a new peace effort involving Syria’s government and opposition groups.
A group of Syrian pro-government fighters walk in the village of Sheikh Ahmad near the Kweyris military air base, east of the Syrian province of Aleppo, Tuesday.
Syria’s state television reported the Kweyris breakthrough against Daesh, broadcasting live from outside the airport and saying a “large number of terrorists” were killed, without providing details.
In cryptic remarks on Wednesday that appeared to target the Russian intervention, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that “those who carry wood to the fire in Syria won’t be able to avoid finding themselves in that very same fire soon”.
It is “not a question of a person, it is a question of security and stability”, he said. It later said the attacks would also include other groups designated by the Syrian government as terrorists.
The Syrian government describes all insurgent groups fighting Assad’s forces inside Syria as “terrorists” and says opposition groups outside the country are foreign-paid agents.
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Arab diplomats briefed on the Russian proposal said it nearly certainly won’t gain the support of countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Qatar, because it makes no mention of when Mr. Assad would leave office, though they said it was conceivable he could stay on during a transition.
