United Nations foresees Syria talks delay in Geneva

“You are not going to have a situation where they are sitting down at the table staring at each other or shouting at each other; you are going to have to build some process here, and that’s what will begin”, he said.

P eace negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition and rebel groups are scheduled to start next Monday, but disputes have made a delay likely.

“We’re not unmindful of the fact that there still remains differences of opinion, and that this is a complicated process and that there is still quite a bit of work that needs to be done to get the meeting to occur”, State Department spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday.

PARIS Jan 21 A senior diplomat from France, which has been helping moderate Syrian opposition groups prepare for talks with the Syrian government, insisted on Thursday that a grouping created in Riyadh last month must form the opposition delegation.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Derek Ford, a scholar and professor, about recent developments regarding peace talks for Syria. And when they consider what is going on, de Mistura says, “the Syrian people and basically everybody realizes that this [war] can not go on”. Lavrov said that Moscow has no intent on delaying talks until February. Why do they want the Russian airstrikes to stop and not the USA airstrikes to stop?

While rebels have received military support from Assad’s foreign enemies, states including Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar and the United States, their calls for more effective weapons including anti-aircraft missiles have gone unanswered. The event will take place in Geneva, which has already hosted two rounds of intra-Syrian negotiations.

The cautious and step-by-step approach to the talks points to the delicate task faced by U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, who is eager to make concrete progress toward ending the almost five-year-old war that has claimed more than 250,000 lives.

Kerry met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Zurich on January 20 in a bid to overcome differences over which Syrian opposition groups would be eligible to attend the talks.

Syrian government supporters Russian Federation and Iran also want to include Kurdish groups. “Debased political bartering at the expense of the Syrian people is tantamount to callous extortion which we will not accept under any circumstances”.

“What we don’t want is to repeat the previous experience of Geneva 2”, the diplomat said, referring to negotiations in 2014 that failed after just a few days.

French President Francois Hollande yesterday said that a coalition waging a bombing campaign against the Islamic State group would “accelerate” air strikes.

Amer Almohibany/ReutersRebel fighters of Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam) carry their weapons as they walk along a street in Medaa town in the Eastern Ghouta of Damascus after they said they have taken control of the area from forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, May 6, 2015.