THE Syrian opposition’s chief negotiator in peace talks in Geneva said on Wednesday he was ‘not optimistic’ about strained efforts to end the nearly five-year war ravaging his country.
Mohammed Alloush, a leading member of the powerful Army of Islam rebel group, told journalists that those pressing to form a unity government with regime members were ‘delusional.’
‘Whoever wants us to go into a unity government with these thugs who kill children is delusional,’ he said, minutes before heading into a meeting with the main opposition grouping, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC).
The HNC was in internal talks on Wednesday morning to discuss its next steps, after a similar and tense meeting the previous evening, an opposition source said. Asked what the grouping would discuss today, Alloush clutched a picture of a young boy who he said had been severely wounded by Russian air strikes in Syria.
‘The problem is not with (UN envoy Staffan) de Mistura. The problem is with the criminal regime that decimates children and with Russia which always tries to stand alongside criminals,’ Alloush said. His appointment as chief negotiator has been controversial. Syria’s government and Russia regularly refer to the Army of Islam as ‘terrorists’.
Alloush, a stocky man in his 40s, also said Kurdish forces fighting jihadists in northeast Syria were ‘a branch of the regime.’ He told reporters the HNC would be taking a decision ‘in two days’ but did not specify what that decision was. HNC head and former Syrian prime minister Riad Hijab is set to arrive in Switzerland today, an HNC spokesman said, in a potential sign of fresh momentum after talks faltered on Tuesday.
The UN-brokered talks in the Swiss city are aimed at ending Syria’s war. The United Nations special envoy for Syria has warned of a total failure of the Syria peace talks as the main opposition coalition announced that it would not attend a planned meeting with the envoy.
Failure ‘is always possible, particularly after five years of a horrible war, where the sides hate each other, where there is a huge lack of confidence,’ said Staffan de Mistura in an interview with the Swiss television RTS on Tuesday. ‘If there is a failure this time after we tried twice at conferences in Geneva, for Syria there will be no more hope. We must absolutely try to ensure that there is no failure,’ he added.
His comments came as the so-called High Negotiations Committee (HNC) cancelled a scheduled meeting with the UN envoy, saying, ‘At this moment, there is no reason to repeat ourselves with de Mistura.’
The gathering was to be the opposition delegation’s second meeting with the Swedish-Italian diplomat as part of the UN-brokered Geneva negotiations aimed at finding a political solution to the deadly conflict in Syria. The foreign-sponsored terrorism which began in March 2011, has claimed the lives of more than 260,000 people and displaced almost half of the country’s population.
• The United Nations special envoy for Syria has held negotiations with the Damascus government delegation as part of the UN-brokered talks aimed at finding a political solution to the conflict in the Arab country.
Staffan de Mistura’s Tuesday meeting with the Syrian government representatives came one day after he announced the beginning of peace talks proper in the Swiss city of Geneva. Damascus has objected to the presence of terrorist groups in the HNC backed by the United States and Saudi Arabia.
The ongoing Syria talks are to be held in an 18-month timetable under a resolution unanimously approved by the UN Security Council. Adopted on December 18, 2015, the resolution calls for a nationwide ceasefire in Syria and the formation of a ‘credible, inclusive and non-sectarian’ government within six months as well as UN-supervised ‘free and fair elections’ within 18 months.
Some 17 nations – including the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran – held several rounds of talks last year in the broadest international push to end the crisis in Syria. Meanwhile, Syria’s ambassador to the UN, Bashar al-Jaafari, who has represented the Syrian government in the peace talks, said on Tuesday that the negotiations are still in a preliminary phase and called the opposition ‘not serious’.
‘We are still in the preparatory phase for indirect talks… We still don’t know who opposition delegation is,’ Jaafari said following his meeting with de Mistura. Al-Jaafari affirmed afterwards that the delegation came to Geneva without preconditions and that it will not accept any preconditions from anyone, adding that the current stage is still a preparatory stage for talks, and that the delegation is waiting to find out with whom it will hold dialogue.
It should be noted that the ‘Riyadh opposition’ delegation refused to meet with de Mistura and reiterated its preconditions with contradict UN Security Council resolution no. 2254 and the two Vienna statements. The Riyadh opposition delegation also continues to hinder efforts to form a delegation with wide representation of the opposition.
In a statement on Wednesday, al-Jaafari said: ‘It seems the first phase of preparations will take a much longer time expected and we don’t know yet when we will finish,’ adding that the Syrian Arab Republic delegation doesn’t know who its interlocutors would be, how many delegations they would face and the names of all participants. He added that information provided by UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura show that several of the participants haven’t arrived at Geneva yet.
Meanwhile the Syrian army continues to make progress. SANA’s correspondent on Wednesday said that the Army and Armed Forces units operating in Aleppo’s northern countryside, in cooperation with groups of popular committees, broke the siege imposed on Nubbul and al-Zahra towns by terrorist organisations.
Earlier, army units, in cooperation with popular defence groups, restored security and stability to al-Uwainat village in the eastern countryside of the province inflicting heavy losses on the ISIS terrorists who were positioned in it, a military source told SANA.
The source said that engineering units dismantled explosive devices and landmines left behind by them terrorists, most of whom were either killed while the rest fled to nearby areas. Earlier still in the day, a source on the ground told SANA that army units, in cooperation with the backup forces, destroyed vehicles equipped with heavy machine guns belonging to Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists in the surroundings of Maarasta al-Khan village and near Byanoun poultry facility in the northern countryside of Aleppo.
Other army units, in cooperation with the popular committees in Nubbul and al-Zahraa towns, completely cut off the terrorists’ supply route between the towns of Mayer and Maarasta al-Khan.
