Syria peace talks to start in Geneva on Friday: UN envoy

Some Saudi-backed rebel groups accuse the Kurds of secretly aiding and abetting the Assad regime.

UN Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria Staffan de Mistura informs the media on the Intra-Syrian Talks, during a press conference, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Monday, Jan. 25, 2016. Syrian rebels want an end to airstrikes and government sieges of territory they hold and the release of detainees.

“It was not comfortable for us for America – even in theory or partially – to adopt what came in the Iranian and Russian initiatives”, said Asaad Al Zoubi, who is expected to head the opposition’s negotiating team in any talks, in an interview with Arabic news channel Al Hadath.

The United States and Russian Federation have been piling on pressure for the talks to get under way, but disagreement over who should represent the opposition have made it hard to get started, De Mistura said.

They are the latest bid to end a conflict that has killed more than 260,000 people and displaced over half of Syria’s population since it began with anti-government protests in March 2011.

Syrian state television broadcast footage of the aftermath of the attack, showing cars ablaze and extensive damage to shops and apartments around the site of the explosion in the Zahra neighborhood, which is inhabited mostly by members of President Bashar Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

The Syrian military and its allies have been encouraged by recent gains carved out with the help of overwhelming Russian fire power. As far as Turkey is concerned, the PYD is a terrorist group tied to the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK).

Turkish officials have said they strongly oppose the involvement of the PYD, and its military wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), from taking part in the talks, and said on Wednesday that it will boycott Geneva if they are invited.

Spokesman Salim al-Muslat said the opposition High Negotiation Committee will discuss its position on Tuesday.

Kerry said he had spoken to the United Nations special envoy for Syria and the foreign ministers of Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, and Turkey in an effort to reach a consensus on how the talks will be run and a planned cease-fire would proceed.

“We are trying to make absolutely certain that when they start that everybody is clear about roles and what is happening, so you don’t go there and wind up with a question mark or a failure”, he said.

His mandate was to involve “the broadest possible spectrum of the opposition” to al-Assad’s government, he said, adding that it was important that women and representatives from civil society had strong representation in the peace talks.

It was up to the Syrian parties to ensure successful talks, Kerry added: “They have to be serious”.

Robert Ford, the last U.S. Ambassador to Syria, sent his vision to rescue the upcoming talks through an open letter to Secretary Kerry. The talks are expected to take six months and the sides will not talk directly to each other to begin with.

De Mistura insisted he was sticking to Security Council decisions to shun some groups like the Islamic State group and al-Qaida-affiliate Nusra Front, but refused any clarification beyond that. “What matters is… starting the talks”, he said.

“When there are attempts to put conditions for [the] collective fight against terrorism, conditions that are irrelevant, such as “if you agree to a regime change, for example, in Syria, then we will for real begin to fight terrorism collectively”… that is, I believe, the biggest mistake”, he said.