De Mistura: Thursday will be an important day for Geneva talks
By Kamila Aliyeva
UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura believes Thursday will be an important day in the Geneva intra-Syrian talks as the opposition's High Negotiations Committee (HNC) is willing to go deeply into the agenda and the government delegation's willingness is to be clarified.
On March 1, the HNC discussed at a meeting with de Mistura the issues of the Syrian peace process, focusing on political transition in the first place, RIA Novosti reported.
"We had a very thorough discussion, we had the opportunity to go deeply in all the items of the agenda," he said adding that tomorrow will be a very important day because we will meet with the government and see what they can and want to discuss in detail.
He said that the opposition is seriously interested in going deeply into the agenda.
“That is quite an important point for us as it is not just procedural, it's substantive," de Mistura added.
"We had a long conversation with Mr. de Mistura and his team, the main topic we discussed was the process of political transition course, this issue will require a long discussion although it was a good start," the head of the delegation of the HNC Nasr al-Hariri said at a press conference after the meeting with the UN special envoy.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said earlier that Russia and the Syrian opposition HNC have a common understanding over further steps needed to resolve the Syria crisis.
“The meeting was constructive as there is a common understanding that we need to move ahead in resolving the Syria crisis,” Gatilov said, adding that the sides outlined their approaches to finding solutions to the Syria crisis. The HNC members articulated their own vision of the current round of talks in Geneva.
The effectiveness of Geneva talks depends on Russia and the U.S., as they are the "key players", a member of the opposition of HNC Abdulhakim Bashar said.
"Geneva talks will not have results, the key to the solution in the U.S. and Russia," said Bashar.
He noted that the HNC calls on Russia "not to be a party to the negotiations".
"Russia has offered to hold talks in Astana under its patronage, we want to see it in Geneva as well,” the oppositionist said.
Meanwhile, the delegation of HNC believes that the fight against terrorism is not a priority at intra-Syrian talks in Geneva as this topic can be discussed in Astana, the official spokesman of the delegation Salem al-Muslim stated.
"The fight against terrorism truly begins with a discussion of the political transition, we need to achieve it,” he said.
The "difficult" topic of fighting terrorism may be assigned to the transitional government in Syria, when it is established, a member of the HNC delegation at the Geneva talks Abdulhakim Bashar said.
The fourth round of the UN-backed intra-Syrian talks between the government and opposition factions in Geneva will end on March 3, the new round is scheduled for March 20.
UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura initially defined three issues of the talks — governance, constitution, and elections.
The Damascus delegation later insisted on including counter-terrorism in the agenda, as a priority.
The HNC considers that the three key issues defined by de Mistura should not be covered in a parallel discussion.
Armed conflict continues in Syria since March 2011. Government troops are confronted by militants of different armed rebel groups. Russia has begun airstrikes on terrorist facilities in Syria since 30 September 2015. The Russian military involvement follows an official request from President Bashar Assad to President Vladimir Putin.
The UN has repeatedly tried but failed to end the Syrian conflict, which has killed 300,000 and displaced 11 million since it began five years ago.
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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva
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