Syrian peace talks stalled as opposition groups split

BEIJING. — The tripartite meeting of the UN, Russia and the United States failed to set a date for the long-delayed Syria peace talks in Geneva, UN-Arab League Joint Special Representative for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, said on Tuesday.
“We were hoping that we would be in a position to announce a date today. Unfortunately, we have not,” he told a Press conference.
The statement followed a series of meetings with Russian Deputy Foreign Ministers Mikhail Bogdanov and Gennady Gatilov, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, and delegates from the other three permanent members of the UN Security Council, as well as Syria’s neighbours. “We are still striving to see if we can have the conference before the end of the year,” he said.

The intention of the conference, dubbed Geneva II, was to gather all Syrian parties, including the government and the opposition, and there were hopes a date would be set for later this month. While Damascus said it was ready to embark on negotiations with the opposition in the talks, the Western-backed opposition remained divided over its participation.

Buthaina Shabaan, President Bashar al-Assad’s media advisor, told RT TV that the “Syrian government said from the beginning it was going to Geneva without preconditions.” The government is clear that it supports the conference as a way to hammer out a political solution to the long-standing conflict without foreign tutelage.

Compared with the readiness of the Syrian government, the opposition, as Brahimi stated, was having “a very very difficult time” and “working very very hard to get ready”.

The Western-backed Syrian National Coalition, the main opposition group in exile, threw a spanner in the works on Sunday, stating that it would not attend talks unless a strict timetable for Assad to leave power was put in place. At an Arab League foreign ministers’ meeting in Cairo, SNC’s Riyadh-backed president, Ahmad Jarba, firmly stated on Sunday that his group would also not attend the conference if Iran is invited.

Resistance from opposition groups like SNC has forced the three parties to hold another preparatory meeting on Nov. 25.  — Xinhua.