Syrian colaagrees to join international peace talks

SILIVRI, Turkey: The main Syrian political opposition group in exile, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), has agreed to attend internationally sponsored peace talks beginning in Switzerland next week, the coalition’s media office said on Saturday.
The “Geneva 2” talks with representatives from Assad’s government start in Montreux on Wednesday.
“58 of the National Coalition members have voted in favor for participating in Switzerland,” Bassem Yousef, a coalition member, told Al-Arabiya TV.
Yousef said only 14 voted against and two abstained from voting.
The talks will seek to find a political solution for the nearly three-year conflict that killed more than 130,000 and wounded at least 500,000 people.
The coalition was originally meant to begin voting on the decision on Friday but postponed the discussion due to problems posed by some 40 delegates, coalition spokesman Khaled Saleh said.
These delegates had threatened to resign at the last meeting of the coalition 10 days earlier, concerned at the “lack of transparency” in the re-election this month of Ahmad Jarba as coalition leader.
Meanwhile, representatives of a major Syrian fighter group also met in Ankara on Saturday to try to agree on a common stance for the upcoming peace talks, Reuters cited opposition sources as saying.
Coalition head Jarba told the SNC’s general assembly in Silivri near Istanbul that the fighter group had met, a source in the president’s office said. He declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the talks.
A militant said the Islamic Front was expected to attend the meeting, but another opposition source said the group had not been present at the talks.