DM Monitoring
Damascus: The political process aimed at solving the decadelong war in Syria is just a tool to waste time for the Bashar Assad regime until it can impose itself on the international stage again, Nasr al-Hariri, president of the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC), stated.
Speaking to Daily Sabah after the fifth round of Syria Constitutional Committee talks, held under the auspices of the United Nations, that ended Friday following a week of negotiations, al-Hariri said: “The talks were not going well at any stage. The regime has not taken any serious step toward the political solution at all.
“The international community must assume its responsibilities toward the regime and toward the regime’s crimes, including the displacement of 10 million Syrian citizens, killing about 1 million, arresting and torturing hundreds of thousands, and above all, the use of chemical weapons,” he underlined.
Talks on a new constitution for Syria hit a brick wall this week, with the U.N. mediator concluding Friday: “We can’t continue like this.”
The fifth round of discussions between 15 representatives each from Assad’s government, the opposition and civil society, staged all week at the U.N. in Geneva, concluded with little to no progress. Pedersen hinted the Syrian regime delegation was to blame for the lack of progress. The U.N. envoy said he presented a proposal to the heads of the government and opposition delegations, adding that his proposal was rejected by the regime team and accepted by the opposition.
“This week has been a disappointment,” Pedersen said. “I set out a few things I thought we should be able to achieve before we started this meeting and I’m afraid we did not manage to achieve these things.”
This week in Geneva it held its fifth session since October 2019.
“The regime constantly hinders any progress in the political process, and it wants a marginal political negotiation process that continues forever without any horizon and without achieving any progress nor contributing to any solution,” al-Hariri pointed out.
He stressed that the opposition wants practical steps on all tracks, a stop to the killings, an end to prosecutions, arrests as well as a mechanism for a political transition including the implementation of Security Council Resolution 2254 and the Geneva Communique.
Al-Hariri said that the regime is holding the process for “minor things and formal details for the purpose of obstruction and disruption.”
The tentative discussions are aimed at rewriting the war-torn country’s constitution.
