US, UK back Syrian opposition as Geneva talks open

UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura and head of the Syrian Negotiation Commission Nasr Hariri meet in Geneva on Tuesday. (Reuters)

GENEVA: US and British officials expressed support for the Syrian opposition ahead of peace talks in Geneva on Tuesday.
The eighth round of talks got underway with a revamped and expanded opposition team meeting the UN envoy in Geneva, but the Bashar Assad regime was conspicuously absent and Russia bemoaned the back-channel diplomacy among key world powers.
The government in Damascus said its team would arrive on Wednesday.
Alastair Burt, the British minister of state for the Middle East, said after meeting the Syrian opposition delegation chief, Nasr Hariri, that the Geneva talks needed “to lead toward the inclusive political transition necessary to end this conflict.”
Burt welcomed the opposition’s achievement at a meeting last week in Saudi Arabia in order to unify further and broaden its membership.
Hariri also met on Tuesday with US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield who expressed US support for a credible political transition process under UN auspices, making clear that any process outside Geneva had no legitimacy.
Hariri said that the “regime was once again undermining negotiations with its refusal to join the start of the talks.”
Elaborating on this, Yahya Al-Aridi, political adviser to the Syrian High Negotiations Committee (HNC), told Arab News that “not having preconditions is something we agreed upon ... We don’t have any preconditions.”
He suggested the Assad regime’s preconditions seemed to be ruining half the country and displacing half its population.
“We are committed to the legality of Resolution 2254. I believe that the UN Security Council’s resolution and the Geneva Communique are not preconditions,” he said.
He said Assad would be showing himself and the regime to the world as being determined to ruin Syria and keep half the population outside the country. “This is inhuman, against any law, against humanity, against everything. We are determined to find a political solution in Syria,” he said.
Al-Aridi said the Assad regime could undermine the Geneva process. “They are ready to undermine anything. If the world is ready to allow that, that is another issue, but we hope that the world is quite serious and keen on (establishing) peace and (restoring) human rights there.”
Asked if the Assad regime and Russia were serious about peace, he said: “They say they are interested in finding a solution and we want them to stand by their word. And if they don’t, then the war should turn against (their) tyranny and brutality.”
He said the Moscow-sponsored Sochi Congress was an attempt at reconciliation following what the Assad regime and the Iranian militias had done for some time in the country. They besieged certain areas for months and they bombarded and subjected the Syrians to brutality. He said Sochi was not covered under UN auspices or international law.
Oubai Shahbandar, a Syrian-American analyst and fellow at the New America Foundation’s International Security Program, said this was the fourth year that the Geneva negotiations had taken place under the auspices of the UN.
“It is difficult to even term these meetings negotiations as direct talks between the opposition delegation and the Assad regime representatives have yet to take place in earnest,” he told Arab News.

“In a phone call last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin promised US President Donald Trump that Assad was ready to accept constitutional reform and free and fair elections. The problem is that Assad still seems intent on using internationally banned chemical weapons against Syrian civilians, so it is difficult to imagine that free and fair elections can take place while he is still in power,” said Shahbandar.
“The ongoing campaign of airstrikes and starvation in Eastern Ghouta also raises serious questions about the promises made by the Russian delegation that a cease-fire would take place in earnest. The Syrian regime will not agree to a full cessation of hostilities at this time because it still has very little incentive to allow for an environment where peace negotiations in Geneva can advance beyond the current stalemate. It is not clear yet whether Moscow can bring Assad to the stage for his eventual stepping down from power,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Syrian regime has agreed to a cease-fire in opposition-held Eastern Ghouta, following days of heavy bombardment, the UN envoy to the war-ravaged country said. “Russia has proposed, and the government has accepted, a cease-fire in Eastern Ghouta,” Staffan de Mistura told reporters in Geneva.