No breakthrough in Syria talks
GENEVA — Syria’s government team at the UN-sponsored peace talks in Geneva, Switzerland, said on Thursday that there will be no dialogue with the opposition as long as it insists on the removal of Syrain President Bashar Assad.
The statement ended the eighth round of the UN-led talks on a sour note, after days of indirect meetings with no progress.
The defiant comments came from the head of the Syrian government delegation, Bashar Ja’afari, just hours after the UN’s Syria envoy called Russian President Vladimir Putin to “have the courage” to push his Syrian government allies to accept new elections and a new constitution.
In an unusual public appeal directly to a key power broker in the region, Staffan de Mistura told a TV interviewer the Russian leader should “convince the (Syrian) government that there is no time to lose” in efforts to reach peace after nearly seven years of war.
Russia has provided crucial military and diplomatic backing to Assad’s forces, though Putin announced a drawdown of his forces in Syria during a surprise visit to the Mideast country on Monday. The Russian president touched down at a Russian military base in Syria in the wake of battlefield successes to laud the troops’ achievements and tell them that a significant number would be going home.
“Peace must be won — and for the peace to be won, it’s necessary to have the courage to push the government also to accept that there must be a new constitution and new elections,” the UN envoy said in comments late Wednesday to Swiss broadcaster RTS.
De Mistura, who has mediated the talks since early 2016, signalled frustration at the lack of progress as participants said discussions would wrap up on Thursday. Previous rounds also made little if any progress.
Ja’afari, extinguished any hopes of a last-minute breakthrough when he emerged later Thursday from a meeting with de Mistura to say his team would not talk to the opposition as long as it insists on Assad’s removal.
The war is estimated to have killed at least 400,000 people and driven over 12 million from their homes.