[Update] ○ LIVE – UN Security Council Syria Peace Process Resolution [Friday December 18, 2015]
A start has been made with exchange of prisoners, territorial swaps and exchange of rebels/civilians under UN coordination. As has been a stumbling block for many years, the opposition rebel forces are unable to unite how they will be represented at the table in Geneva for talks with the global power brokers the US and Russia.
The rebel factions with a large contingent of foreign fighters and jihadists haave split allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood (Turkey and Qatar) and the Salafists of other GCC nations under leadership of UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. A prepatorial meeting of the opposition was held in Riyadh where terrorist organizations also set at the table in the Kingdom: Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham.
Of course the Kurds and Orthodox Christians were not represented but must have a voice in Geneva under UN keadership.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s answers to Interfax questions, Moscow, December 7, 2015
Question: It has been announced recently that the next meeting of the International Syria Support Group may be held in New York. US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, mentioned this possibility. Will the meeting take place this year or early next year?
Sergey Lavrov: There are different forms of diplomacy. Our way is that an event is announced only after it has been fully coordinated. During our meeting in Belgrade, US Secretary of State John Kerry and I discussed further cooperation at the International Syria Support Group (ISSG). We’ve reaffirmed that the first two meetings in Vienna produced two very important documents, which set out the principles that the external parties are prepared to support and offer to the Syrians so they can use them to look for solutions to the crisis in their country. These principles are public knowledge. The current task is to launch talks between the Syrian government and the opposition. This calls for doing two interrelated things, as we agreed in Vienna on November 14. First, the Syrian opposition should form a delegation for talks with the Syrian government, which must be representative and include all opposition groups, including external and, by all means, internal opposition. The delegates must represent Sunnis, Shia, Kurds and Christians, that is, all those who want to live in a secular, multi-faith and multi-ethnic Syria. The second thing concerns the armed people who are fighting in Syria but don’t care about its future, or rather, who only care about seizing power and establishing Islamist, extremist and terrorist rule in Syria.
We’ve agreed to compile two lists: a list of terrorist organisations and a list of those who will send representatives to the opposition delegation. Mr Kerry has reaffirmed several times – the last time he did this was at our meeting in Belgrade on December 3 – that this will be the sole purpose of the next ISSG meeting. We are working to compile the list of terrorist organisations. This work is being coordinated by our Jordanian colleague. We’ve also agreed that UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura will form the final list of opposition representatives for talks with the Syrian government. All ISSG members are assisting with this. We also highlighted Saudi Arabia’s role, because this year Egypt and Russia have held several meetings with the Syrian opposition groups that have formulated their views. Saudi Arabia, which has been contributing to this process, will hold a conference of the opposition forces in the next few days to promote our common idea of forming a united opposition delegation for talks with the Syrian government.
Secretary of State John Kerry has proposed that the next ISSG meeting be held in New York at the end of next week, on December 18 and 19. I replied: “We will meet any time and any place, provided it is in keeping with the obligatory conditions. First, we must have an issue for discussion, which is possible only after we are convinced that the previous meeting’s decision on the approval of the lists (the list of terrorist organisations and the Syrian delegation) will be implemented. Second, the meeting’s venue and the timeframe must suit absolutely all members of the Vienna process because this is the only format in which we can meet.”
The Vienna group, in the format that developed during the first two meetings on October 30 and November 14, is a balanced and effective group of external parties who are capable of working out balanced and fair conditions for an intra-Syrian dialogue.
This is all I said. I didn’t say “No,” but I clearly indicated that discussing the time and place for the next ISSG meeting will be possible only when all group members without exception are ready for it and after they put forth their stances. As far as I know, they haven’t done this yet, because after the meeting was announced in Washington and New York, as you mentioned, many of our partners asked us whether we knew anything about it.
I gave this long answer because, as I said before, our form of diplomacy provides for coordinating the time and place of diplomatic events before they are announced and the manner in which this is done.
Continued below the fold …
Question: US President Barack Obama said in his address to the nation that he would be willing to cooperate with Russia in the fight against terrorism, but only after a ceasefire is achieved in Syria, thus shifting the emphases. He also said that the United States is already negotiating with Turkey on shutting off the Syrian border. Would you please comment on this?
Sergey Lavrov: Involving another participant in any global task should be the job of the UN Security Council. Any country, no matter how great it is, and no matter how exceptional it considers itself, should follow the principles of international law. In the very beginning, a couple of years ago, we urged the United States and all our other partners to respect international law and the role of the UN Security Council in working out approaches to fighting terrorism. It is wrong to go around this organisation and its central body responsible for the maintenance of peace and security. Life has repeatedly shown us that no matter who started a unilateral action somewhere in the world, this country will eventually face the need to go to the Security Council and request its approval for further action. This is what is happening now. The Security Council is actively working on a draft resolution – importantly, a Russian-American initiative – which is going to summarise, in a most comprehensive manner, all the anti-terrorist tasks that have already been discussed at the United Nations, that are binding for all states and for the UN Secretary-General. In this document, special emphasis will be placed on the fact that we do not simply proclaim principles or make demands, but that we are determined to ensure that these requirements are met. The same holds true, in particular, for the ban on trading in oil and other things such as artifacts or cultural property stolen from the areas captured by ISIS and other terrorists. I hope that this resolution will end the many months of resistance to our proposal (the US, by the way, have not shown much enthusiasm in this matter) to put ISIS on the UN Security Council’s list of terrorist organisations bluntly and without any reservations, as was the case with Al-Qaeda. Again, it’s all there in the draft resolution right now, the document distributed among the members of the UN Security Council and generally agreed on with our American partners. We expect it to be adopted as soon as all the others support the proposed approaches.
As for shutting down the border, as you know, a lot of things that are only happening now should have taken place a long time ago, in the early stages of the Syrian crisis. It has long been common knowledge what the Turkish-Syrian and the Turkish-Iraqi borders are like, and what helps the Islamic State to live and grow. I mean the oil fields and other illicit business. We welcome the attention to the need to thwart these criminal phenomena shown by many countries, including the US and the US-led coalition.
We have noticed that, perhaps coincidentally, this interest became apparent after the Russian warplanes, in response to the legitimate Syrian government’s appeal, began supporting the Syrian army’s fight against terrorist groups in their country. Perhaps it would be better if our partners’ interest in the suppression of various manifestations of terrorism in Syria emerged earlier, but even so, if it was something we did that spurred that interest, it does give me some satisfaction.
Riyadh, Rumeilan, and Damascus: All You Need to Know About Syria’s Opposition Conferences by Aron Lund | Carnegie Endowment |
It’s conference time in the Syrian opposition. All of a sudden, three rival meetings have kicked off, all claiming to represent the opposition to President Bashar al-Assad. One is being held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, while the other two take place inside Syria–the first in Rumeilan, a town in the Kurdish-controlled northeast, and the second in the Syrian capital of Damascus, under the watchful eyes of Assad’s security apparatus.
This rush of political meetings is a direct consequence of the agreement struck in Vienna on November 14, when a group of states calling themselves the International Syria Support Group issued a joint communiqué laying out their vision of how to resolve the conflict in Syria. The group included all the major players in Syria, such as the United States, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar. Their communiqué called for negotiations between Assad and the opposition as soon as possible, with a target date of January 1. This very early date was apparently backed by the United States and intended to gain momentum and add a sense of urgency to the process.
That may or may not have been a good idea, but the lack of time for preparations has added its own set of problems. The Assad government has a well-practiced negotiating apparatus. It has relied on more or less the same individuals in every negotiation, including a core group made up of Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Meqdad, the veteran diplomat Ahmed Arnous, and a few others. They operate under the direct oversight of Assad himself and while the government cannot be accused of flexibility or creative diplomacy, it enjoys the great diplomatic benefit of being disciplined and on-message.
The same cannot be said of the opposition, which is a mess of fractious factions. It has never managed to produce a team of negotiators that represent even a thin sliver of the insurgency on the ground. When the last round of negotiations was held in January and February 2014, the so-called Geneva II talks, the opposition delegation had extremely limited support from armed rebels on the ground and none of them were on the negotiating team. Whenever the opposition in exile meets, foreign diplomats can be seen stalking the hotel lobbies, desperately trying to shepherd all of their Syrian clients in the same direction.
That’s why the Saudi government, egged on by Americans and others, has called a major meeting of Syrian opposition factions. The Riyadh conference intends to hammer out a road map for negotiators and also, if possible, elect a diplomatic team that will represent all of the participating groups in the upcoming talks with the Assad government.
In other words, a great deal is at stake. The Americans are hurrying the process along, anxious not to waste this opportunity to get talks going. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has already expressed his wish to convene a follow-up meeting of governments involved in the Syrian war in New York by December 18, although he noted that they must first await the outcome of the Riyadh conference and “a few other issues.”
The Kremlin is less enamored with what is happening in Riyadh. The Russians have had a role in selecting the delegates in the Saudi conference, too, but they objected almost immediately to Kerry’s declaration. Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin told reporters on Wednesday that it would be premature to aim for a December 18 meeting in New York stating that, “In our opinion, if the meeting is held in the nearest future, it should take place in Vienna in order to continue this process and in a sense keep a distance from the hectic atmosphere of New York.”
- ○ Western alliance worried about Russian return to Middle East: Former Turkish Ambassador to NATO Pamir | Hürriyet Daily News |
Two major regional players with feeling of being left out:
○ Iran says Riyadh meeting of Syrian opposition may harm peace talks | Reuters/Fars |
○ Erdogan of Turkey expresses his feelings by military provocation along its border
○ Is Erdogan’s Mosul Escapade Blackmail For Another Qatar-Turkey Pipeline?
Hardliners: VP Joe Biden responsible for White House [military and Pentagon view/opinion] on foreign policy assisted by NSC Susan Rice and UN Ambassador Samantha Power. President Obama want policy discussion with opposing views, this has led to stalemate and confusion. Not the manner in running global policy issues where lives are at stake. Only Obama is extremely satisfied the way he administers his advisors on the National Security Council. I have often written about these split decisions and an incoherent president Obama during press conferences while traveling abroad.
