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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed preparations for the Syria peace congress in the Russian city of Sochi on Jan. 29-30 with Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu in a phone call on Saturday, the Russian foreign ministry said on Sunday.
The talks came after the ninth round of Syrian peace talks hosted by the UN which ended with no sign of progress toward a peace deal.
Moscow said the Syrian National Dialogue Congress will attempt to speed up the political settlement of the Syria crisis.
Earlier on Saturday, the Syrian opposition said they will not attend the conference and dismissed the meeting as an attempt by the Syrian government’s close ally to “sideline” the current United Nations peace process.
"It's clear that somebody there is obstructing the whole process and wanting to sideline the importance of Geneva, the political process as a whole,” Yahya al-Aridi, a spokesman for the opposition delegation said at the end of two days of peace talks between the Syria government and opposition in Vienna.
Syrian chief negotiator and Ambassador of the Permanent Representative Mission of Syria to the United Nations Bashar al-Jaafari (C) is pictured ahead the start of talks on Syria in Vienna on Jan. 25, 2018.
"This whole round in Vienna was supposed to be a crucial one, a test for commitment. And we didn’t see this commitment. And the UN didn’t see this commitment,” al-Aridi said.
Nine rounds of UN peace talks between the warring sides have made little progress toward ending the civil war in which hundreds of thousands have been killed and 11 million – a majority of the Syrian population – driven from their homes.
While efforts to mediate the conflict are now centered on UN-backed talks in Geneva, Switzerland, seven separate rounds of negotiations brokered by Russia, Turkey and Iran have been held since the beginning of 2017 in Astana, Kazakhstan.
Sochi agenda
Western powers and some Arab states believe Sochi is an attempt to create a separate peace process that would undermine UN-brokered talks while laying the groundwork for a solution more suitable to Assad and his allies Russia and Iran.
The UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres said on Saturday he will send his special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, to Sochi.
Guterres "is confident that the congress in Sochi will be an important contribution" to reviving the peace talks held under UN auspices in Geneva, his spokesman said, adding that Guterres had received assurances that the Sochi conference would not seek to sideline the UN talks.
UN envoy Staffan de Mistura (C) looks on before the start of talks on Syria in Vienna on January 25, 2018.
Russia had long sought UN participation in the conference in the Black Sea resort to lend credibility to its diplomatic efforts to end the six-year war.
Russia has invited more than 1,500 delegates to the two-day conference that the West views with suspicion.
The main opposition coalition fears that Russia will push a peace deal that will keep President Bashar al-Assad's authority intact after six years of bloodshed.
Moscow has welcomed Guterres' decision. Russian Foreign Ministry said the Vienna talks had "focused in particular on the problems of constitutional reform" - a process that could determine whether or how Assad remains in power.
"On these issues, a mutual agreement was reached between the Russian side and the UN representatives, on the sidelines of the Vienna meeting," it reads in a statement.
(CGTN & AFP)
