Talks hold key to Syria end-game
beirut — As Syria’s war approaches its seventh year, two new rounds of talks on resolving the conflict are scheduled to take place in Astana and Geneva.
The first meeting is in the Kazakh capital Astana, and is expected to build on talks held there last month sponsored by the Syrian government’s allies Russia and Iran, and rebel backer Turkey.
The Kazakh foreign ministry said representatives from the government and armed rebels, as well as UN envoy Staffan de Mistura and US officials, would be invited to the February 15-16 talks.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday said the Astana meeting would be a chance to “monitor the commitment of different parties to refrain from using force and to promote, encourage, the political process.”
A Syrian source close to the government said the discussions in Astana would be “purely military.”
By comparison, a second meeting in Geneva now scheduled for February 23 and sponsored by the UN is expected to focus on the key issues that divide the two sides, including the fate of President Bashar Al Assad.
The talks in Geneva, the fifth time the parties have gone to Switzerland, have been pushed back
but in practice it (astana process) looks like it’s a venue for Turkey, russia, and to some extent Iran, to arrive at their own understandings and to try to engineer a mutually satisfactory political solution on their terms. Sam Heller, of the Century Foundation think-tank
twice already, in part to give the opposition more time to form a unified delegation.
Moscow says the Astana process is meant to support the Geneva talks, but there has been speculation that it is working with Ankara to develop an alternative “Astana track”. “In theory, it is a complement to a still-live ongoing Geneva process,” said Sam Heller, a nonresident fellow at The Century Foundation think-tank.
“But in practice it looks like it’s a venue for Turkey, Russia, and to some extent Iran, to arrive at their own understandings and to try to engineer a mutually satisfactory political solution on their terms.”
The Syrian government has indicated it will attend the Geneva talks, and its delegation is likely to be led by its usual negotiator, Syria’s UN ambassador Bashar Al Jaafari. The key opposition High Negotiations Committee has announced a 21-member opposition delegation to Geneva, including 10 rebel representatives.
A new chief opposition negotiator, lawyer Mohammed Sabra, replaces Mohamed Alloush of the Army of Islam rebel group, which said it would participate in the delegation in an advisory capacity.
The HNC touted the delegation as “unified” and said it includes representatives from two rival opposition groupings known informally as the Cairo and Moscow groups. But both denied being represented, and it remains unclear if they will seek to attend in separate delegations. —