Azernews.Az

By Kamila Aliyeva

UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura voiced the possibility of direct talks between Syrian delegations before the next round of talks.

This was stated on July 13 during the seventh round of UN brokered peace talks in the Swiss city of Geneva ahead of the meeting with the government delegation of Damascus led by Bashar Jaafari.

Jaafari has already held two official meetings with de Mistura in Geneva this week.

"I'm not pushing for it. Because I want, when it happens, that there should not be a row but should be real talks. We are actually pushing for areas where they do have common points,” de Mistura said.

Asked whether such a meeting could take place before the eighth round of the Geneva negotiations scheduled for late August, he replied that it may happen "even earlier."

The three opposition groupings have recently held technical talks, aligning their positions to the extent that they might be able to form a single delegation, if not a united one. Formation of single opposition may positively affect the whole process of intra-Syrian negotiations thus speeding up the conflict resolution.

Six previous rounds of United Nations-backed talks have ended with little progress towards ending the war.

In parallel, Syria’s warring sides have also attended five rounds of peace talks brokered by Iran, Russia and Turkey in the Kazakh capital, Astana. The Astana talks have resulted in a memorandum of understanding on creation of de-escalation zones in Syria.

The civil war in Syria between government and opposition with various terrorist groups involved, including Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL), began back in March 2011.

Syrian President Bashar Assad managed to turn the tide of war in his favor after Russia started an air campaign in September 2015, while Iran is an uncompromising supporter of the Syrian leader.

According to a report by the Syrian Center for Policy Research, the conflict has claimed the lives of over 470,000 people, injured 1.9 million others, and displaced nearly half of the country’s pre-war population of about 23 million within or beyond its borders.

---

Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz