Syrian talks a dud, U.N. envoy says

Assad’s delegation stuck on discussion of ‘terrorism,’ mediator complains

U.N. special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said Thursday in Geneva that negotiators had missed “a golden opportunity” for progress.
U.N. special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said Thursday in Geneva that negotiators had missed “a golden opportunity” for progress.

GENEVA -- The U.N. envoy for Syria said the latest round of Geneva talks ended without progress Thursday after two fruitless weeks -- a "golden opportunity missed" -- and acknowledged that he needs to come up with new ideas to make headway toward ending Syria's nearly seven-year war.

Staffan de Mistura's dire assessment -- and rare admission of failure -- came at the end of the eighth round of the largely ineffective, U.N.-sponsored talks in Switzerland. The U.N. envoy said he was "disappointed," after going in with ambitions to get the two sides to talk to each other.

De Mistura also offered some of his harshest criticism yet of the Syrian government delegation, accusing it of setting preconditions that he had warned against, and said its team refused to discuss anything other than "terrorism," a term the government uses to refer to all armed opposition against President Bashar Assad.

The Damascus delegation also insisted that the opposition team fell short of being an adequate representative of all of the opposition in Syria, referring to groups that Assad's government has tolerated and that have not called for his ouster.

De Mistura said the opposition was engaged on other subjects, such as governance, the constitution and elections.

"Despite a lot of effort by my whole team, day and night with all sorts of creative formula, we did not have real negotiations," he said.

"It is a big missed opportunity, a golden opportunity missed at the end of this year," he said.

However, de Mistura, who has mediated the talks since early 2016, said he was still planning to reconvene the two sides next month but will need to consult with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres first. Asked whether there was any point in returning to Geneva, de Mistura said the alternative would be abandoning Syria and a return to war.

"Our motto is never give up," he said.

The head of Syria's government team in Geneva, Bashar Ja'afari, extinguished any hopes of a last-minute breakthrough when he emerged earlier Thursday from a meeting with de Mistura to say his team would not talk to the opposition as long as it insists on Assad's removal from power.

In comments to reporters, he slammed the Syrian opposition for its so-called Riyadh communique, issued in Saudi Arabia before the latest round got underway in Geneva. The communique stated that the opposition's ultimate goal was to see Assad step down at the start of a political process.

The Damascus official described the statement as "blackmail of the Geneva process" and said its withdrawal was a precondition for talks. He also told reporters in Geneva that "those who drew up the Riyadh communique are the ones who sabotaged this round" of talks.

Nasr al-Hariri, the head of the Syria opposition delegation, warned that the Geneva talks are in "great danger," accusing the government delegation of sabotaging them.

Al-Hariri said the "credibility of the international community is at stake" because Assad's government is "sabotaging the political process."

Earlier, de Mistura called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to "have the courage" to push his Syrian government allies to accept new elections and a new constitution.

In an unusual public appeal directly to a key power broker in the region, de Mistura told a TV interviewer that Putin should "convince the [Syrian] government that there is no time to lose" in efforts to reach peace after nearly seven years of war.

Russia has provided crucial military and diplomatic backing to Assad's forces, though Putin announced a drawdown of his forces in Syria during a surprise visit to the Mideast country on Monday.

Meanwhile, American-supported Syrian opposition forces killed more than 20 Islamic State militant fighters in an area near the Jordanian and Iraqi borders, U.S. officials said. The clash was described as a response to the Syrian army's failure to prevent the Islamic State from moving freely through its lines.

"Despite the presence of Russian-backed, pro-Syrian regime forces in the area, Daesh still finds ways to move freely through regime lines and pose a threat," U.S. Brig. Gen. Jonathan Braga said, using an alternative name for the Islamic State.

Information for this article was contributed by Robert Burns and Lolita C. Baldor of The Associated Press.

A Section on 12/15/2017

Upcoming Events