Syria‘s government and opposition have agreed to meet in the same room on Saturday and accept that their talks will be based on a 2012 communique which called for a transitional governing body to be set up, mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said on Friday.
“Tomorrow we have agreed that we shall meet in same room,” Brahimi told a news conference after he held separate meetings with government and opposition delegations in Geneva.
“The discussions I had with the two parties were encouraging,” he said. ”I think the two sides understand that very well and accept it,” Brahimi said, in reference to the Geneva I communique that calls for the establishment of a transitional body.
Opposition delegate Anas al-Abdah told Reuters: ”We are satisfied with Mr. Brahimi’s statement today and that the regime has accepted Geneva 1 (communique).
“And on this basis we will meet the Assad delegation tomorrow morning. It will be a short session in which only Brahimi will speak, to be followed by another session, a longer session in the afternoon,”
The talks nearly faltered before they began, with opponents of President Bashar al-Assad refusing to meet his delegation unless it first signed up to a protocol calling for a transitional government.
Plans for the two sides to sit down to talk face-to-face on Friday were ditched at the last minute. Instead, they each met separately with Brahimi, at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva.
“We have explicitly demanded a written commitment from the regime delegation to accept Geneva 1. Otherwise there will be no direct negotiations,” opposition delegate Haitham al-Maleh told Reuters.
Earlier, Syria’s Information Minister Omran Zoabi said the government would not accept demands for the establishment of a transitional governing body.
“No, we will not accept it,” Zoabi told Reuters.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem was quoted by state television earlier on Friday telling Brahimi that if no serious work sessions were held by Saturday, the government delegation would leave peace talks in Geneva.
“If no serious work sessions are held by (Saturday), the official Syrian delegation will leave Geneva due to the other side’s lack of seriousness or preparedness,” state television quoted Moallem as saying, citing a United Nations source.
A UN spokeswoman confirmed Brahimi was meeting the delegates separately: “There are no Syrian-Syrian talks at the moment,” said Alessandra Vellucci. “I cannot tell you anything about what will happen in the next few days.”
Even before the announcement that the direct talks were canceled, the outlook was dim.
“The objective is for the first round of talks to last until next Friday, but expectations are so low we’ll see how things develop day by day,” a Western diplomat said.
“Every day that they talk is a little step forward.”
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/syria/140124/syrian-government-warns-it-will-leave-geneva-talks-if
Syrian government warns it will leave Geneva talks if no "serious sessions" are held before Saturday
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