Drive for Syrian Peace Talks Resumes in Geneva

GENEVA — After months of diplomatic haggling and frustration, Syria’s government and opposition have committed to take part in a peace conference next month and will soon name their delegations, but Iran’s participation remains blocked by the United States, Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy coordinating preparations, said Friday.

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Pool photo by Fabrice Coffrini

Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy, speaking with members of a French delegation in Geneva on Friday.

 

Ministers from 26 countries will attend the opening of the conference, set for Jan. 22, Mr. Brahimi told reporters after meeting Wendy R. Sherman, an American assistant secretary of state; Mikhail Bogdanov and Gennady Gatilov, Russian deputy foreign ministers; and senior officials from other concerned countries, underscoring the international desperation to at least start a discussion that may eventually end the 33-month-old conflict, which has cost more than 100,000 lives and left much of Syria in ruins.

“The message from today is that there is momentum for the conference from the two delegations who really count at the end of the day,” said a senior American official attending Friday’s discussions, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

But after the daylong preparatory talks here, Mr. Brahimi and other participants made it clear that many crucial details remained uncertain.

The Syrian government has already selected its negotiators, he said, and has promised to name them soon. But on the thornier issue of who will appear for Syria’s factionalized and bitterly divided opposition, whose infighting frustrated efforts to convene the negotiations this year, Mr. Brahimi could suggest only, “Wait and see.”

Under intense pressure from the United States and European countries, Syria’s exile opposition coalition grudgingly agreed last month to participate in what is known in diplomatic shorthand as Geneva II, but the most militant Islamist rebels fighting inside Syria have rejected its authority and the negotiations. Fierce battles between rival rebel factions in recent weeks have called into question the coalition’s ability to pull together a delegation with sufficient credentials to negotiate credibly with the government.

The coalition is working very hard to make sure that it is inclusive and “representative of the kind of Syria that the people of Syria hope for,” the senior American official said.

A second American official said, “They are very conscious of the need to connect to the ground,” noting that only the militant Nusra Front and the Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria had rejected the peace process outright.

Still, the delegates will not be particularly representative, Mr. Brahimi remarked to reporters after his meetings. The conference, which will start in the Swiss town of Montreux and then move to Geneva, will mark only the start of a process, he added, expressing the vague hope that in later stages of negotiations “the representation of the people of Syria will be better and better.”

Friday’s discussions also failed to overcome the American view that participation by Iran, a crucial regional ally of President Bashar al-Assad, would not be the right thing to do, Mr. Brahimi said.

The United Nations and Mr. Brahimi have long advocated a role for Iran as a regional power, and last month’s breakthrough accord between Iran and world powers on curbing its nuclear program looked as if it might lower objections to accepting Iran’s involvement in the conference. As Ms. Sherman met Mr. Brahimi on Friday, American experts met Iranian officials across the city to work out details of carrying out that accord.

But the two issues are entirely separate, the senior American official said. Iran’s failure to endorse an earlier Geneva communiqué that provides the basis for the conference and calls for the creation of a transitional government by mutual consent remains one sticking point, the official said.

Iran should also think about withdrawing the military personnel that it has sent to Syria and ending its support for Lebanon’s pro-Assad Hezbollah militia, which has also sent fighters to buttress the Syrian Army, the official said.

If Iran is not present, “we still would like to work with them,” said Mr. Brahimi, who has had regular contacts with the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, in recent weeks. American officials agreed that Tehran could engage in the process in a variety of ways without taking part in the conference.

The more troubling issue, Mr. Brahimi made clear, is developments on the ground in Syria. “The fighting is intensifying all the time and aid that is available is not reaching the people who need it,” he said.

“We hope that now we have a date for the conference, the parties will take a number of unilateral decisions as measures to indicate they are coming to Geneva to end this conflict,” he added. He called on both sides to release prisoners, especially women and children, and urged better access for humanitarian aid and an end to the use of “devastating weapons,” referring to the government’s barrel bombing of the northern city of Aleppo in recent days.