A statement from the United Nations says de Mistura will start by meeting the Syrian government delegation and then meet “with other participants in the talks and representatives of civil society”, without elaborating on who exactly they are. The Syrian opposition does not seem ready, technically and politically, to participate at this point in time and this is contrary to the UN’s confirmation that “there is no change in timings”.
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Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov will arrive in Geneva on February 1 to attend intra-Syrian talks, he added.
Neither de Mistura nor Syria’s UN ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari commented to reporters as they began discussions inside Geneva’s Palais des Nations, the European UN headquarters. “We are pressuring the opposition to prove that they are united, coherent, that they have a strong leadership and that they have a vision, and a policy and a certain consensus on what the future will be and I don’t think they do, I don’t think they will in the near future, and I don’t think they can”, he said. Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally that also supports the Western-backed opposition groups, objects to the inclusion of the main Kurdish opposition group in Syria, the PYD.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad reportedly arrived in the Swiss city in time for negotiations, though conflicting demands from opposition groups present a serious obstacle as to how they will play out.
De Mistura issued an emotional video message on Thursday to Syrians both inside and outside the country saying that after previous failures, this new effort “cannot fail”.
An opposition source familiar with the HNC’s talks this week in Saudi Arabia said it was waiting for a response from the U.N. Secretary-General over its demands, which are also part of a U.N. Security Council resolution passed on December 18.
On Thursday, Hijab told the Al-Arabiya News Channel that they might come to Geneva but will not enter the negotiations rooms unless their demands are met.
“We want the talks to start, but the main obstacle is those who continue bombing our civilians and starve them”, Salem al-Muslat, a HNC spokesman, told Al Jazeera from the capital of Saudi Araba, Riyadh.
“The arrival of the Syrian government delegation and its meeting with de Mistura is the main result of the first day of talks”.
He stressed that it was up to the combatants to help the Syrian people.
The United States, which supports moderate Syrian insurgent groups, insisted that the opposition should attend the talks on Friday and go without preconditions.
In Syria, the official Tishrin newspaper boasted that the no-show by the Saudi and Turkey-backed opposition in Geneva “reflects the collective flight of terrorist groups backed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey from the political table, following their collapses on the battlefield”.
“Five years of this conflict have been too much”, said De Mistura in an emotional plea to all sides. The Syrian government made advances in two key provinces, Latakia and Daraa, this week against rebel forces.
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Officials have said the talks, only the second dialogue between Syrians since the start of the conflict, would run over six months, with the first round expected to last between two and three weeks.
