The UN envoy acknowledged he would consider it a success if he is able to keep both the Syrian opposition and government delegations in Geneva talking with his team until the global contact group meeting takes place in 10 days time.
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Ja’afari said that if the opposition “really cared” about the lives of Syrians it should condemn the killing of more than 60 people on Sunday by Islamic State suicide bombers at the country’s holiest Shi’ite Muslim shrine.
De Mistura suggested that the International Syria Support Group, a coalition of 17 nations that pushed for the Geneva talks, take a greater role in promoting a cease-fire. The talks, initially set for Friday between the Syrian government and the Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee, have been put on hiatus while opposition pleads their case.
The Swedish-Italian diplomat said he expected the talks to be “complicated and difficult” but that he hoped the negotiations would “achieve something” by February 11.
The announcement followed comments from the government’s chief negotiator Bashar al-Jaafari that formal indirect peace talks had not yet begun.
He also planned a separate meeting with the main opposition group later in the day.
The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the attack, which heightened the potential to sharpen sectarian divides in the conflict.
The opposition has insisted that government airstrikes and sieges of rebel-held areas must stop ahead of the talks, which aim to bring an end to a war that has killed at least 250,000 people, displaced millions from their homes and given an opening to the Islamic State group to seize vast swaths of Syria and neighboring Iraq.
“We came here to discuss Resolution 2254 with the special envoy…”
The indirect talks in Geneva are part of a process outlined in a United Nations resolution last December that envisages an 18-month timetable for a political transition in Syria, including the drafting of a new constitution and elections.
“There will be a lot of posturing, we know that, a lot of walk-outs and walk-ins because a bomb has fallen or because someone has done an attack, and you will see that happening”, he said last week.
“Assad is the one who is the terrorist”, he said. Jaafari said on Sunday Damascus favored an “enlarged national government”, while the opposition want a transitional governing body.
Damascus says that rebels are also besieging towns, and objects to the inclusion in the HNC – backed by Washington and Saudi Arabia – of rebels whom it sees as “terrorists”.
Patterson “urged Russian Federation to use its influence with the Assad regime to push for full humanitarian access to all Syrians in need”, the official said. Syrian state television also said government forces were advancing. With the official start of the Geneva talks, the worldwide community should begin to hold serious discussions about a cease-fire, the envoy pressed.
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A weekly agenda-setting news program, hosted by the controversial and fiercely pro-Kremlin presenter Dmitry Kiselyov, which was broadcast Sunday evening, did not mention the talks but showed a long report about the conflict, including shots of pro-regime fighters cheering, “Assad will prevail!” and wearing T-shirts with the face of a Russian pilot shot down and killed by a Turkish jet previous year.
