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Syrian peace talks set for next year in Geneva
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Syria’s government and the opposition will hold their first peace talks on January 22 in Geneva, Switzerland, the United Nations announced yesterday.
The talks are an attempt to halt a nearly three-year-old civil war that has killed more than 100,000 people.
Previous attempts to bring the two sides together have failed mainly because of disputes over who should represent the Syrian opposition and government, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s future role, and whether Iran, Saudi Arabia and other regional powers should be at the table.
The UN statement did not specify who will represent Syria’s opposition, but Britain’s foreign secretary said the main group, the Syrian National Coalition, will participate.
“The Geneva conference is the vehicle for a peaceful transition that fulfills the legitimate aspirations of all the Syrian people for freedom and dignity, and which guarantees safety and protection to all communities in Syria,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s office said in a statement.
The key goals, the statement said, would be the “the establishment, based on mutual consent, of a transitional governing body with full executive powers, including over military and security entities.”
“The Secretary-General expects that the Syrian representatives will come to Geneva with a clear understanding that this is the objective, and with a serious intention to end a war that has already left well over 100,000 dead, driven almost 9 million from their homes, left countless missing and detained... and forced unacceptable burdens on Syria’s neighbors,” it said.
That goal is based on the roadmap for a Syrian political transition, adopted by the US, Russia and other major powers at a conference on Syria in June 2012 in Geneva, in which the warring sides were not invited.
The roadmap envisaged the establishment of a transitional governing body with full executive powers agreed to by both sides, and ends with elections. There has been no agreement on how to implement it. One of the biggest sticking points has been the future role of Assad.
Earlier this month, the Syrian National coalition, agreed to attend peace talks if a number of conditions were met, including humanitarian corridors to give relief agencies access to besieged areas and the release of detainees. It dropped an earlier demand that Assad step down ahead of peace talks.
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