Syria Talks Set for Friday: De Mistura
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Talks aimed at ending Syria’s brutal war will begin in Geneva Friday, the UN mediator said, after a delay over who will represent the country’s fractious opposition.
Staffan de Mistura raised nearly as many questions as he answered in a news conference in Geneva Monday, the day when talks had originally been set to begin before tensions over who would be invited, involving countries like Russia and Turkey, forced a delay.
He also confirmed comments from US Secretary of State John Kerry last week that the two main sides won’t meet face-to-face initially in the “proximity” talks.
De Mistura said invitations would go out Tuesday, but declined to specify his criteria about deciding who receives them.
“The first priority will be the focus of the talks of what most Syrians – if not all – want to hear: The possibility of a broad cease-fire, and the possibility of stopping the threat of ISIL, and therefore, thanks to a broader cease-fire, an increase of humanitarian aid,” he said, using an alternative acronym for Daesh (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant or ISIL).
Learning from past failures and missteps, de Mistura jettisoned an initiative of four “working groups” on various aspects of Syria’s crisis led by Europeans which he launched last summer. He also insisted the new talks didn’t amount to “Geneva III,” an allusion to earlier rounds of unsuccessful discussions.
De Mistura predicted “a lot of shuttling because there are not only different delegations but also civil society, women and others who deserve to be heard ... So you could have quite a lot of simultaneous meetings taking place.”
“We want to make sure that there is a substantial presence of women to advise me and make sure we are in the right position for the future of Syria,” he added, according to the Associated Press.
The entire process of getting the talks going has been entangled in regional power-jockeying and geopolitics: Turkey, which has long fought a Kurdish resistance group PKK, insists that some Kurdish groups who have been battling Daesh – and at times succeeding against it – must be kept out.
Russia, a rival of Turkey and key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, has called for the inclusion of Kurdish representatives, and the US and others have supported the Kurds in the fight against Daesh. Russia and Iran consider some members of militant groups formed in Turkey as terrorists.
The Geneva talks will be the first since discussions collapsed two years ago, but comments by Syrian opposition figures cast further doubts on the process.
Salem Meslet, spokesman for the opposition Supreme Committee for Negotiations, a Saudi-backed body, insisted the government should lift sieges imposed on several militant-held areas around the country before any talks take off.
