Syria Warring Sides to Meet Saturday after Regime Delegation Threatened to Quit Peace Talks
U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said Friday that delegations from Syria's regime and opposition had agreed to meet together for peace talks in Geneva on Saturday.
"I met the delegations of the opposition and the government separately yesterday and again today and tomorrow we expect, we have agreed, that we will meet in the same room," Brahimi told journalists.
Pulled together by the United Nations, Russia and the United States, delegations from President Bashar Assad's regime and the opposition had been due to sit down early Friday at U.N. headquarters in Geneva for their first face-to-face talks.
But Brahimi was unable to convince them to sit together, after the opposition insisted the regime must be prepared to discuss Assad leaving power.
"We knew that it was going to be difficult, complicated," Brahimi said. "We never expected this to be easy -- I think the two parties understand what is at stake."
The regime has threatened to withdraw from the talks should "serious sessions" fail to take place on Saturday, but Brahimi appeared confident no one would be immediately walking away from the talks.
"Both parties are going to be here tomorrow and they will be meeting. Nobody will be leaving on Saturday and nobody will be leaving on Sunday," he said.
Brahimi said discussions so far had been "encouraging" but said talks on concrete issues had not yet begun.
"We have not discussed the core matters yet. We hope that both parties will give concessions that will be to the benefit of the process," he said.
Earlier on Friday, Syria's regime threatened to quit peace talks in Geneva.
Syrian state television said Foreign Minister Walid Muallem had told Brahimi that "should serious sessions fail to take place tomorrow, the official Syrian delegation will leave Geneva."
Muallem told Brahimi "the Syrian delegation is serious and ready to start, but the other side is not," it said.
Brahimi spent Thursday trying to convince them to be in the same room for the start of the talks -- the biggest diplomatic effort yet to stem the bloodshed in Syria's devastating civil war.
But instead he again met separately with each delegation.
"This process is shaping up, so there have been changes to previous declarations," U.N. spokeswoman Alessandra Vellucci told reporters. "We are going step by step."
Brahimi met the regime delegation in the late morning and had begun meeting with the opposition National Coalition around 4:00 pm (1500 GMT).
Sources within the delegations told Agence France Presse the opposition had refused to sit in the same room unless the regime accepted the need for a transitional government without Assad.
Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Muqdad told reporters the opposition was obstructing the talks.
"The problem is that these people do not want to make peace, they are coming here with pre-conditions," he told reporters.
"Of course we are ready to sit in the same room. Why are we coming here then?"
Nazir al-Hakim, a member of the opposition delegation, told AFP it was only willing to negotiate on the basis of the agreement reached at the "Geneva I" peace conference in 2012, which called for the creation of a transitional government.
"We agree to negotiate on the application of Geneva I. The regime does not accept that," he said.
"We will be in the same room when there is a clear agenda for negotiations. We need guarantees that Geneva I will be discussed," Hakim said.
The regime rejects the opposition's contention that the Geneva I agreement requires Assad to go.
Expectations are very low for a breakthrough at the Geneva II discussions, which officials have said could last up to 10 days.
But diplomats believe that simply bringing the two sides together for the first time is a mark of progress and could be an important first step.
With no one appearing ready for serious concessions, mediators will be looking for short-term deals to keep the process moving forward, including on localized ceasefires, freer humanitarian access and prisoner exchanges.
Brahimi said he "had indications" from both sides that they were willing to discuss these issues.
The opposition arrived in Switzerland with a sole aim -- toppling Assad -- while the regime says any talk of removing the Syrian leader is a "red line" it will not cross.
Prominent opposition member Burhan Ghalioun told reporters that Assad's opponents would not leave Geneva before the regime.
"We will stay the whole time. The Syrian opposition will not withdraw from this conference until the rights of the Syrian people are met," he said.
The start of the conference in the Swiss town of Montreux on Wednesday was marked by fiery exchanges, with Muallem labeling the opposition "traitors" and agents of foreign governments.
But U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon urged the two sides to work together, saying: "Enough is enough, the time has to come to negotiate."
Erupting after the regime cracked down on protests inspired by the Arab Spring, Syria's civil war has claimed more than 130,000 lives and forced millions from their homes.
Pitting Assad's regime, dominated by the Alawite offshoot of Shiite Islam, against largely Sunni Muslim rebels, the war has unsettled large parts of the Middle East.
It took months of efforts to convince the two sides to come to the conference, with the opposition National Coalition only deciding at the last minute to attend.
The debate over whether to take part exposed deep divisions within the opposition, with its biggest bloc, the Syrian National Council, quitting the coalition after the decision was taken.
Questions have been raised about whether the opposition delegation is truly representative of Assad's opponents and if it would be able to implement any deal with rebel fighters on the ground.
Source: Agence France Presse
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