“National coalition” cannot become a unifying force for all Syrian opposition members – Lavrov

Syria’s” National Coalition” cannot represent the entire opposition at the Geneva-2 international peace conference for Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, the Voice of Russia correspondent Polina Chernitsa reports.

“The “National Coalition” aspires to be the only legitimate representative of the Syrian people. But it does not represent even the majority of groups in the “opposition ” ,he told a press conference in Moscow on Friday.

“Seeking to promote a positive attitude of the “opposition” to the Russian-US initiatives, we have proposed that members of various “opposition groups” visit Moscow for a completely informal and non-binding conversation,” the Russian minister said.

“We simply want to understand if the “opposition” delegation to the Geneva conference is really unable to represent all the significant forces in opposition to the government,” Lavrov said.

“We have more than once seen that the “National Coalition” is really unable to unite all the Syrian “opposition forces”. So, I hope that our invitation to have an informal meeting in Moscow – and we would like our US partners and UN Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to send their experts here – will draw a positive response,” Lavrov stressed.

He said that many “opposition” forces “had expressed a positive attitude of a sort.”

“We have grounds to believe that this [Moscow meeting] may be useful and help “opposition” activists to look each other in the eye and elaborate an approach, which will not disagree with the Russian-US initiative but will take it positively and allow for their participation in the Geneva conference,” Lavrov concluded. 

M.D