Syria peace talks to start Friday in Geneva

He has said the talks will last for six months but has been lowering expectations about what they are likely to achieve. The Syrian conflict, which will soon enter its sixth year, has killed more than 200,000 people and left millions more injured, internally displaced or as refugees.

Speaking at a long-awaited press conference in Geneva on Monday, de Mistura put the delay down to a “stalemate” and “disagreements and different opinions about who should be on the list” of attendees.

Mr De Mistura’s office said it had issued invitations to the talks, but without saying who had been invited.

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“Some members of the global Syria Support Group, as I understand, insist that only those opposition groups that met a year ago in Riyadh are worthy of representing the Syrian opposition, and all the others should be left out”. Hopefully the proximity talks will lead to more inclusive talks, dubbed “Geneva III”.

De Mistura said he’s not yet identifying possible rebel negotiators in order to start peace talks “on the right foot”.

Syrian sources said the 32-member body was split about what to do after a tense weekend meeting with John Kerry, the USA secretary of state. It’s worth taking a day or two, or three, or whatever. “I’m all for that”.

Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports were also claiming that the United Nations might invite two separate opposition delegations to the Geneva talks in an evident negotiation. He expects representatives of “civil society and women” will be involved in the talks, in line with last December’s UN Security Council resolution which urged broad, inclusive representation.

“You have to get to the negotiations without preconditions and have to get to the ceasefire and lay down the road ahead for the transition discussion itself”, he said.

AMMAN/BEIRUT – The Syrian opposition cast doubt on whether it would go to peace talks, throwing United Nation diplomatic efforts into question and accusing the U.S. of adopting Iranian and Russian ideas for solving the conflict.

Opposition spokesman Muslat accused Russian Federation and the Syrian government of throwing obstacles in the path of the talks.

Ankara considers the party and its armed wing to be an offshoot of the banned Kurdistan Worker’s party (PKK), which has waged a bloody insurgency in the mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey since 1984.

Opposition official Asaad al-Zoubi, who is due to head the HNC delegation, told Reuters that without the implementation of goodwill steps including the release of detainees “there will be no negotiations”.

The opposition demands that Assad have no role in Syria’s future, even during a transitional period, while Russia, Iran and the government say that is to be determined by the Syrian people.

Kerry said he also spoke to de Mistura and the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, France and Turkey.

Securing a ceasefire and space to deliver humanitarian aide to suffering Syrians will be among the first priorities, he added. Efforts to bring about peace have so far failed because of “the lack of trust and political will”, he added.

However, Staffan de Mistura said discussions over who should take part in the talks were still ongoing.

The so-called Geneva 2 talks in early 2014 saw De Mistura s predecessor Lakhdar Brahimi host high-profile but fruitless meetings in the Swiss cities of Montreux and Geneva.

Press TV conducts an interview with Jim W. Dean, the managing editor of Veterans Today from Atlanta, and Baraa Abdulla Sharaf Shiban, a political commentator from London, to discuss the upcoming Syria peace talks in Geneva.