Syria’s Kurds leave Geneva after not being invited to talks

An independent opposition co-ordinator, who predicted on Wednesday the HNC would not participate, remarked: “They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”, referring to the refusal of armed groups to reach a truce in Aleppo which Mr de Mistura tried to broker in March 2015.

Despite the absence of the opposition delegation, United Nations officials opened the talks Friday in Geneva – the first worldwide effort for a peace settlement since earlier United Nations negotiations collapsed in 2014.

De Mistura ignored journalists’ questions about a report by the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya news network that the main opposition group has agreed to come to Geneva.

The largest opposition coalition had said they wouldn’t attend, as they were more concerned with fending off a renewed government military offensive, including increased airstrikes by Russian Federation.

The latest bid to end five years of war in Syria gathered some momentum as the main opposition group arrived in Geneva for United Nations-sponsored talks, though it refused to lift a threat to boycott the peace process.

HNC spokesman Monzer Makhous said that the opposition had not changed a previous position that it would not travel to Switzerland if specific conditions for talking politics were not met.

On the eve of the talks, De Mistura delivered a message to the Syrian people, calling them to raise their voices, “to say ‘khalas, ‘ it is enough”.

U.N. Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura will begin by meeting the government’s delegation, which is headed by the country’s ambassador to the U.N. Bashar Ja’afari, according to de Mistura’s spokeswoman Khawla Mattar.

The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Saturday that 16 people have starved to death in the government-besieged town of Madaya since aid convoys arrived this month and blamed the authorities for blocking medical supplies shipments.

The Geneva negotiations, if they happen properly, would not be face-to-face between the regime and its opponents.

Meanwhile, Assad Al Zoubi, who was due to head the HNC delegation at the talks, claimed earlier in the week that U.S. secretary of state John Kerry was adopting Iranian and Russian ideas about Syria. Analysts say the government has little incentive to negotiate with an opposition that is weak and fractured.

In a separate development on Friday, the Dutch government announced it was planning to extend air strikes against IS militants from Iraq to Syria. Syria’s conflict has killed more than 250,000 people, displaced millions and sent hundreds of thousands as refugees to Europe.

The High Negotiations Committee, an alliance of mainstream Syrian opposition groups, met on Friday for the fourth day in the Saudi capital.

The two men also discussed the ongoing talks in Geneva which are being attended by representatives of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime as well as opposition figures.