The proposal says certain Syrian opposition groups should be included in the Vienna peace talks Saturday.
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The Russian document obtained by Western media says Moscow is offering “an approach to the settlement of the Syrian crisis”, not yet a formal peace plan. Almost 50 journalists from 12 countries have visited the Hmeymim air base near Syria’s Latakia, where the aviation grouping of the Russian Aerospace Forces is located, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said on Wednesday.
The document stays largely silent on the thorny issue of whether Assad should leave power, however, as many rebel groups have demanded.
One person was killed and five wounded in a mortar attack on residential areas of Damascus the state broadcaster said while the Observatory said nine people were also killed in government rocket fire on the flashpoint town of Douma. He said Saudi Arabia and Qatar have no right to lecture anyone on human rights.
Moscow says its air strikes primarily target IS jihadists though the United States and its coalition partners say Russian Federation is mainly attacking more moderate groups fighting Assad.
“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, according to Reuters.
Neither representatives of the regime or opposition are expected to attend at this stage of the dialogue.
A Russian file circulating in the United Nations has suggested a constitutional reform process in Syria, surviving 18 months.
The debate will determine who will play a role in the political process.
“Not only because the devil is in the details, but because we are talking about regional powers that don’t see eye-to-eye and you are talking about multiple factions that are going to fight until the end”, he said.
Other Western diplomats dismissed the peace plan presented almost two weeks ago as a non-starter because it does not clarify the fate of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. The Russian plan calls the UN Security Council to agree to list the Islamic State (IS) fundamentalist group, as “a terrorist organization”.
However, the consequences of such an escalation in Syria and perhaps elsewhere against Islamic State in the Middle East is going to have to be weighed against the fallout – more attempts by the terrorist group to attack its interests worldwide. Instead, the draft simply prevents him from chairing the new constitutional commission.
Under the proposal, parliamentary and presidential elections would be held simultaneously after the constitution is approved in a referendum.
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“We do not believe that it is going to be possible to bring the opposition groups into the political process and have an effective cease-fire unless we have a clear point at which President Assad will depart”, he told reporters at the United Nations.
