Syrian Negotiations in Geneva: Total Uncertainty Does Not Allow to Achieve Any Result

• 03.06.2017, 14:02
•  Near East,  World

SANA

In Syria, along with military operations and terrorist attacks, efforts aimed at political solution to the conflict continue. After talks in Astana mediated by Russia, Turkey and Iran, the fourth round of negotiations started in Geneva at the end of February under the auspices of the UN, which has not yet managed to achieve any significant result, like it was the case of all the previous rounds.

Several opposition groups have arrived in Geneva to negotiate with the delegation of the Syrian government. This time also they failed to form a united opposition delegation. As for the Syrian Kurds, they were nor presented at the negotiations. According to the Middle East Institute, the opposition is presented by several groups, among them the most influential is the opposition's High Negotiations Committee (HNC).

UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura wanted to concentrate parties’ attention on such issues as the formation of a new government, drafting a new Constitution and holding elections. But the negotiating parties have quite different demands. The official delegation of the Syrian government insists that the real talks may start only after an agreement on fight against terrorism is reached, while opposition says discussions should start after a decision on political transformation is made. At the same time it should be noted that opposition groups have quite different approaches to this problem. Several groups, for example, High Negotiations Committee, demand immediate resignation of the President of Syria, while others have more moderate stance.

Official Damascus insists any negotiation can be conducted only with the unified opposition delegation and not with separate groups. These differences have increased also because of the violations of the ceasefire and attacks that took place in Homs. The negotiating parties demanded from each other to condemn the terrorist attacks as a precondition for the continuation of negotiations.

From the very beginning it was obvious that the chances of success in Geneva were not high. The above-mentioned disagreements were exacerbated by the overall uncertainty in the context of the Syrian conflict and the regrouping of forces. On the one hand Russia continues to strengthen its military involvement in Syria, at the same time it becomes the major player of the political processes. On the other hand it is not clear yet what can be expected from Donald Trump’s America. This uncertainty affects both the general situation inside Syria and the negotiations.