Syria to leave if talks fail to start today
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Syria’s government handed an ultimatum to a UN mediator hoping to broker peace in the country’s civil war, vowing to leave if “serious talks” do not begin by today.
The government delegation that traveled to Geneva met for less than 90 minutes yesterday with UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi as part of a peace conference that has been on the verge of falling apart ever since it was conceived.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem told Brahimi that if “serious talks don’t begin Saturday, the official Syrian delegation will have to leave because the other party is not serious or ready.”
Direct talks planned for yesterday between the Syrian government and the Western-backed Syrian opposition were scrapped, and the opposition was to meet separately with Brahimi later.
The Syrian government blamed the opposition Syrian National Coalition for the lack of direct negotiations, which were seen as the best hope for an eventual end to the three-year civil war that has killed at least 130,000 people.
The bloodshed has destabilized the entire region and turned Syria into a magnet for al-Qaida-inspired militants.
In Switzerland, Bouthaina Shaaban, an adviser to Syrian President Bashar Assad who traveled to Geneva for the talks, questioned whether the opposition coalition — made up largely of exiles based in Turkey — was prepared to negotiate an end to the violence.
“We came here with Syria and the Syrian people on our mind, only while they came here with positions and posts on their mind,” she said.
The coalition’s head, Ahmad al-Jarba, said on Thursday that he was committed to the talks and would give his negotiators full clout on their pace and scope.
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