Syria opposition asks UN to stop troubled talks: negotiator
Syria’s main opposition group, in indirect talks with the government, has asked the United Nations to put the negotiations on hold, a representative of the opposition says, as the anti-government bloc feels increasingly frustrated with the initial outcome of the meeting in the Swiss city of Geneva.
"We asked for the postponement of talks, only a postponement until the conditions are right for a resumption of negotiations," Mohammad al Aboud, a member of the opposition negotiating team, told Reuters on Monday.
Another member of the Saudi-backed opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) confirmed the decision but asked to remain anonymous.
Only three delegates met UN envoy Staffan de Mistura for talks, instead of the usual 15, after a letter signed by unspecified "armed revolutionary factions" said de Mistura and the Syrian government were trying to put forward "half-solutions."
The ongoing round of talks, which began on April 13, is expected to continue until the end of this week. However, reports emerging from Geneva have shown that the anti-government side is becoming increasingly irked with the way the talks are going forward. A main demand of the HNC, which supports an array of militant groups on the ground in Syria, has been to force Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to relinquish power.
Militants on Monday launched a fresh offensive against military and civilian positions northwest of Syria, claiming they were retaliating against what they called government’s deliberate violation of a truce deal, which has been in effect across Syria for less than two months. Damascus rejected the allegation, saying the attacks on rural areas in Latakia and Hama on Monday were meant to gain more ground in the negotiations.
The United Stated and Russia engineered the current ceasefire on February 27 in a bid to facilitate the talks. The ceasefire excludes Daesh and al-Nusra Front, two major Takfiri groups operating in east and north of Syria.
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