Daily Times

BEIRUT: Peace talks between the warring parties in Syria, which were scheduled to open Monday, will instead begin in Geneva on Friday and last for six months, the UN’s Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said.

De Mistura told reporters that the start date was pushed back because of a “stalemate” over the make up of the delegations, but that the invitations to the participants were expected to be sent out on Tuesday.

“We are going to aim at proximity talks starting on the 29th and ongoing for six months” De Mistura said, adding that the first round was expected to last between two to three weeks. “There will be no opening ceremony,” the UN envoy said.

Securing a ceasefire and space to deliver humanitarian aide to suffering Syrians will be among the first priorities, he added. “We are all feeling… the time has come to at least try hard to at least produce an outcome,” De Mistura told reporters.

The talks will mark the first time the warring sides will take part in negotiations since January 2014, when de Mistura’s predecessor Lakhdar Brahimi hosted high-level but fruitless meetings in the Swiss cities of Montreux and Geneva, a round of talks known as Geneva II.

Syria’s opposition will meet on Tuesday to discuss UN-led efforts to convene delayed peace talks, an opposition spokesman said, repeating a call for goodwill steps from the government including a halt to bombardments before any talks happen.

The United Nations is trying to convene the first talks in two years to end Syria’s nearly 5-year-old civil war, but the effort so far has been held up in part by disagreement over who should be invited to attend to represent the opposition.

Syria’s civil war has killed 250,000 people and driven more than 10 million from their homes. It has drawn in most world powers, with the United States leading an air campaign against Islamic State fighters that control eastern Syria and northern Iraq.

Russia, which entered the war last year with a separate air campaign against opponents of its ally President Bashar al-Assad, says it wants opposition figures it calls terrorists barred from talks, and wants to include groups like the Kurds who control wide parts of northern Syria.

The main Sunni Arab opposition groups, who are supported by regional Arab governments, say they will not attend the talks unless they can choose their delegation.

Salim al-Muslat, a spokesman for the Syrian opposition’s High Negotiation Committee (HNC), accused Russia and the Syrian government of throwing obstacles in the path of talks that were originally due to begin in Geneva on Monday.

The HNC, formed in Saudi Arabia last month and grouping armed and political opponents of Assad, has repeatedly said talks cannot begin until air strikes are halted, government sieges of rebel held territory are lifted and detainees freed, steps outlined in a Dec. 18 UN Security Council resolution.

“We want to realise pure humanitarian matters. They are not preconditions. It is an international resolution at least part of which must be implemented, so we see there is seriousness and good will in this matter,” al-Muslat said on Saudi-owned Arabic news channel Arabiya al-Hadath.

“Unfortunately, it is not possible to sit and talk to anyone without the suffering being lifted first.” The lead negotiator appointed by the HNC told Reuters on Sunday said the opposition was coming under pressure from US Secretary of State John Kerry to attend the talks before these demands were met. Muslat however said on Monday the talks with Kerry had been “positive” and that the opposition was “sticking by certain principles, not putting up obstacles.”

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber driving a fuel tank blew himself up on Monday at a checkpoint run by Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo killing at least seven of its members, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said that four of the group’s commanders are believed to be among those killed. Ahrar al-Sham officials were not immediately available for comment.

The Britain-based monitoring group said that the attack in the Sukari neighbourhood in the city destroyed three nearby buildings and wounded dozens of people while many are believed to be stuck under rubble. Earlier, the United States and its allies staged 19 strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on Sunday in the coalition’s latest round of daily attacks on the militant group, the coalition leading the operations said in a statement.