Unofficial Talks Between Syrian Arab Republic’s Delegation and UN Deputy Envoy for Syria ahead of Geneva Meeting

GENEVA, (ST)- The fifth round of Intra-Syrian Talks in Geneva will kick off on Friday with the participation of the Syrian Arab Republic’s delegation led by Bashar al-Jaafari. Other delegations which attended the previous round of talks are also taking part.

Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy, the UN Deputy Special Envoy for Syria, on Thursday visited the Syrian Arab Republic’s delegation at its residence place in Geneva. The two sides held unofficial round of talks in which they exchanged viewpoints on preparations to officially start the fifth round of the Intra-Syrian talks due on Friday.

 “Today, we started preparatory talks with all parties to prepare the ground for holding the official talks. The meeting with the delegation of the Syrian Arab Republic was useful and we hope that tomorrow we will start discussions of core issues,” said Ramzy, pointing out that the UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura will arrive in Geneva today evening  coming from Ankara.

On Wednesday, The delegation of the Syrian Arab Republic held constructive talks with the Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Office Alexei Borodavkin and the Chinese Special Envoy for Syria Xie Xiaoyan within the framework of constant consultation and coordination between Syria and each of Russia and China.

The Syrian delegation reiterated that the escalation of terrorist attacks of Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusra against civilians and residential districts in Damascus, Hama and other Syrian cities prove that these terrorist organizations and their operating countries want to use terrorism as a political weapon and to undermine every opportunity to solve the crisis and stop bloodshed in Syria.

After their arrival in Geneva, members of the “Riyadh opposition” group put preconditions and announced that they want to discuss only certain “baskets”. One of the delegation’s members claimed that “it is impossible to eliminate the terrorism phenomenon in Syria because terrorism is a global issue.”  He said so ignoring the agenda of the Geneva talks which clearly provides for discussing all the baskets, particularly the basket relating to fighting terrorism.

Hamda Mustafa