UN-mediated peace talks in Geneva under UN envoy Staffan de Mistura made no headway on Tuesday after failing to achieve even a future date for the talks to continue and now even Washington’s allies privately doubt the August 1 date will be met. The opposition said it would not come back to Geneva negotiations unless conditions improved on the ground.
“The target for August is to have a framework in place, a framework agreed, for a political transition,” a senior State Department official told reporters in Vienna.
“We’re talking to the Russians, trying to get a better environment for the political negotiations,” he said. “Particularly on the regime side.”
The opposition coalition, he said, had been more open about how they would like to see the deal negotiated but Assad’s people – while publicly backing talks – have not engaged.
“The regime is just not there, and I think that’s really the key to it,” he said. This is a key that can only be turned by Russia, if at all. Moscow, Assad’s key foreign backer, supports the ISSG platform on paper but backs Syrian government forces on the ground.
Some Syrians have also expressed anger at the support given to Assad by Iranian forces.
Some still living in Syria have posted photos of themselves holding signs telling the ISSG that inviting the Iranian delegation is the same as inviting their killers to the meeting.
The message written on one sign calls for the Iranian regime to be “held accountable for their crimes committed in Syria in the past five years.”
The Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) described the inviting of Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to the talks as “tantamount to asking an arsonist to take part in putting out the fire.”
“The Iranian regime has been the main reason for the Assad dictatorship’s survival. Without the mullahs’ massive military intervention and full-fledged support for Assad, his regime would have been overthrown a long time ago,” said the NCRI’s Shahin Gobadi in a statement to The Local Austria.
Meanwhile, regime forces continue to blockade several rebel-held areas around Damascus, stopping all humanitarian food and medical aid in defiance of the United Nations.
Source: The Local 17 May 2016
