UN envoy hopes to start peace talks Friday

U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura announced a new start date and format for the Syrian talks, during a press conference, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva on Monday.

Instead, the launch date has been postponed until Friday and the rival factions will not meet face to face, the U.N.’s special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, told reporters in Geneva.

Syria’s warring parties were scheduled to begin the latest round of talks aimed at ending the country’s conflict on Monday in Geneva.

Syria’s civil war has killed more than 250,000 people and driven more than 10 million from their homes since it started in 2011.

The Syrian government in Damascus has said it is ready to attend talks, but the opposition’s High Negotiation Committee – which includes political and armed opponents of President Bashar al-Assad – has refused to participate until Damascus halts bombardments, lifts blockades, and releases detainees – steps outlined in a United Nations Security Council resolution last month. “But what we are trying to do is to make absolutely certain that when they start everyone is clear about roles and what’s happening so you don’t go there and wind up with a question mark or a failure”.

“They have to be serious”. Two independent delegations from the opposition could be invited by de Mistura for the talks, some reports said. Maybe it’s a pressure thing or maybe it’s an internal political thing.

However, he clarified that militants of Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, would not be included in the peace talks – the first in two years – or be part of any ceasefire agreement.

The call by Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov came after the two spoke by phone Monday, the ministry said. “Up to them – you can lead a horse to water; you can’t make it drink”, Kerry said.

The entire process of getting the talks going has been entangled in regional power-jockeying and geopolitics: Turkey, which has long fought a Kurdish resistance group PKK, insists that some Kurdish groups who have been battling IS – and at times succeeding against it – must be kept out. That is something Turkey opposes since it sees the primary Kurdish militia fighting in Syria as little more than an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), with which it is now at war.

Yet another major hurdle in the way of the Geneva talks is the demand by opposition groups that a ceasefire and access for humanitarian aid be put in place before the talks begin.