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Syrian peace talks in peril before they begin

GENEVA — The future of the biggest push to date to end Syria’s brutal civil war looked highly uncertain yesterday with the main opposition group threatening to walk away before planned peace talks even begin in earnest.

Demonstrators hold up placards and a Free Syria flag in a protest outside the United Nations offices in Geneva on the opening day of the Syrian peace talks. The absence of key opposition members threatens to derail the biggest diplomatic push yet to resolve the country’s civil war. Photo: AFP

Demonstrators hold up placards and a Free Syria flag in a protest outside the United Nations offices in Geneva on the opening day of the Syrian peace talks. The absence of key opposition members threatens to derail the biggest diplomatic push yet to resolve the country’s civil war. Photo: AFP

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GENEVA — The future of the biggest push to date to end Syria’s brutal civil war looked highly uncertain yesterday with the main opposition group threatening to walk away before planned peace talks even begin in earnest.

Representatives from the umbrella body for mainstream opposition groups, who arrived in Geneva early yesterday, are refusing for now to enter the hoped-for talks with President Bashar Assad’s government.

The High Negotiations Committee (HNC), set to meet with United Nations envoy Staffan de Mistura, is demanding that humanitarian aid first gets through to besieged towns, that bombing of civilians ceases and that hundreds of prisoners are released.

“If the regime insists on continuing to commit these crimes then the HNC delegation’s presence in Geneva will not be justified,” coordinator Riad Hijab warned in a statement in Arabic posted online on Saturday.

“The delegation will inform De Mistura of its intentions to withdraw its negotiating team if the UN and world powers are unable to stop these violations,” he said.

Highlighting the dire humanitarian situation, Doctors Without Borders on Saturday said 16 more people had starved to death in Madaya, one of more than a dozen towns under blockade by regime or rebel forces.

More than 4.5 million people with “immense humanitarian needs” are living in areas extremely hard to access because of fighting, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

On Friday, the scheduled start of a planned six months of talks, protesters in Geneva highlighted the plight of ordinary Syrians with “siege soup” of grass and leaves.

The war that has killed more than 260,000 people since 2011 is a complex conflict sucking in — on different sides — Turkey, Iran and Gulf states, also Western countries and, since September, Russia. A fresh spat between Russia and Turkey, two of the many outside powers embroiled in the conflict, erupted over the weekend after Ankara accused Moscow of violating its airspace two months after it shot down a Russian jet.

The chaos in Syria has allowed the extremist Islamic State group to overrun swathes of Syria and also Iraq, giving it a launchpad for attacks the world over.

Half of Syria’s population have fled their homes, forcing millions to seek refuge in neighbouring countries and also in Europe, where the influx is proving to be a major political and social headache.

On Saturday, dozens of migrant men, women and children, including Syrians, drowned when their boat sank off Turkey — adding to the almost 4,000 who perished trying to reach Europe by sea last year.

The intra-Syrian negotiations, if they get going, are part of an ambitious roadmap set out in November in Vienna by all the external powers involved. The process envisions elections within 18 months but leaves unresolved the future of Mr Assad, whose regime has been making gains on the ground since Russia began supporting him with airstrikes in September.

Another thorny issue is which rebel groups will be involved in the talks, although all sides agree on the exclusion of extremists from Islamic State and the Nusra Front tied to Al Qaeda.

Ahrar Sham, one of the most controversial groups in the HNC because of its ties to Nusra, was not represented in Geneva, said HNC spokesman Riad Naasan Aghad.

And the powerful Army of Islam rebel group “is here, they are a negotiator”, he told reporters, but said HNC chief negotiator and Army of Islam member Mohammed Alloush had not arrived yet.

“There is every reason to be pessimistic, and there is no realistic scenario in which a breakthrough would be reached,” said Mr Karim Bitar, analyst at the Paris-based Institute of International and Strategic Relations. AFP

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