The five United Nations Security Council veto powers have agreed on the text of a draft resolution to endorse an global road map for a Syria peace process and the 15-member body is expected to adopt it later on Friday, diplomats said.
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Emphasizing the need for a ceasefire monitoring and verification mechanism, the Council asked Ban to report back to it on options with a month, and called on Member States to provide “expertise and in-kind contributions” to support such a mechanism.
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Meanwhile Friday, some 20 foreign ministers tackled those and other hard issues for a possible end to Syria’s civil war, including sorting out which Syrian groups will represent the opposition in peace talks in the new year.
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– Expresses support for establishing within a target of six months a “credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance”, drafting a new constitution and holding “free and fair elections” supervised by the United Nations within 18 months.
Foreign ministers from more than a dozen countries – including Russian Federation, the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other European and Middle Eastern powers – were set for talks aimed at ending Syria’s old civil war at New York’s Palace Hotel on Friday.
Russian Federation has been resisting any ouster of Assad during the transition, saying they believe that the ultimate future government of Syria should be up to the Syrians themselves, and not to be decided by the global community.
The resolution has been described as a rare gesture of unity on the Syria peace process by a council often deeply divided on the crisis, which is deep into its fifth year with well over 300,000 killed.
Mohammad Javad Zarif told The Associated Press on Thursday that his country has seen “no lists we can agree upon” of Syrian opposition groups that should be included in peace negotiations set to begin by January 1, or of Syrian groups that should be considered terrorist organizations instead.
Diplomats said that at previous rounds of Syria talks in Vienna, Zarif and his Saudi counterpart engaged in several heated exchanges about Syria.
Ministers said they would meet again in January, and de Mistura is now tasked with pulling together a final negotiating team for the Syrian opposition.
Jordan’s foreign minister presented a draft list of “terrorist” groups that the ISSG parties will agree to exclude from the talks. “Each country sent its own view”. He told reporters that he was “not too optimistic about what has been achieved today, but a very important step has been made… for Syrians to determine the future of their country”. Lavrov warned against efforts to “divide terrorists among good and bad ones”.
The man who will lead negotiations for the coalition – former Prime Minister Riad Hiab who defected in 2012 – said Mr Assad should have no role in the negotiations. It also backed a timeline previously agreed in Vienna for talks between the government on a unity government and opposition, and eventual elections.
It also endorsed the continued battle to defeat militants from the Islamic State group who have seized large swaths of both Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
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But they said it was unlikely to affect passage of a United Nations resolution giving worldwide endorsement of the peace process. The strikes are focused on more moderate forces fighting Assad in areas where the Islamic State group has little or no presence.
