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Syria peace talks: John Kerry leads calls for removal of President Bashar al-Assad Syria peace talks: John Kerry leads calls for removal of President Bashar al-Assad
(about 4 hours later)
The US Secretary of State John Kerry has said President Bashar al-Assad can have no place in a transitional government as delegates clashed on the opening day of the Syria peace talks. Peace negotiations between the Syrian regime and the opposition – which had for so long seemed doomed never to take place – have finally started, bringing flickering hopes of ending the bloodiest and longest conflict of the Arab Spring.
The summit, which is being held in Montreux, Switzerland, is discussing the Geneva II document, which lays out a political transition plan for Syria that is hoped will bring the bloody three-year conflict to an end. The future of President Bashar al-Assad was always going to be the most difficult issue in the proceedings, with the fundamental demand of the opposition and its Western backers that he must leave power. The regime’s delegation rejected this at the outset, leading to apprehension that the talks may founder.
Chaired by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the talks have brought together members of the Syrian regime and opposition for the first time since 2011. However, there was little in the way of a conciliatory tone from either side as the future of President Assad featured prominently in the summit's opening speeches. At the close of the day’s session, the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, said he “was not surprised” by the stance from Damascus, but insisted there was a momentum building to bring the strife, now entering its third year, to an end. The US President, Barack Obama, and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, have had a lengthy conversation about the matter and “parallel moves” were under way which could not be disclosed at present, Mr Kerry said.
Ahmad Jarba, the head of the opposition Syrian National Coalition, demanded that President Assad be removed from office, and accused the regime's forces of supporting al-Qa'ida on the ground in Syria. He also left the door open for Iran to participate in the talks, acknowledging that, as a staunch supporter of the Syrian regime, it could help to broker a ceasefire. The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, had to rescind an invitation to Tehran to attend the current talks, known as Geneva II, after vociferous objections from Washington. But Mr Kerry said: “Iran does certainly have an ability to be helpful and make a difference. We hope they will decide to be constructive and make a decision to operate in a way forward that can allow them to do so. There are plenty of ways that that door can be opened in the next weeks or months, and my hope is they will want to join in a constructive solution.”
He also urged President Assad's delegation to “immediately” transfer “total” power to an interim governing body, as bitter accusations from both sides marred the beginning of peace talks. Despite this, the bitter accusations and recriminations which have accompanied the remorseless violence on the ground in Syria could not be kept out as the conference got under way in Montreux, Switzerland.
Earlier, Mr Kerry had said that President Assad could have no place in a transitional government. "We see only one option, negotiating a transition government born by mutual consent. That means that Assad will not be part of that transition government. There is no way, no way possible, that a man who has led a brutal response to his own people can regain legitimacy to govern."
The Syrian Foreign Minister, Walid al-Moallem, accused Western-backed states of worsening the situation by arming opposition forces and supporting terrorism in the country, while he accused the opposition fighters themselves of being traitors.
The below gallery contains very graphic images released by the authors of the report.  We have taken the decision to publish these pictures to inform our readers of the alleged abuses being carried out in SyriaThe below gallery contains very graphic images released by the authors of the report.  We have taken the decision to publish these pictures to inform our readers of the alleged abuses being carried out in Syria
Later in the day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after the first day of talks that the rival Syrian delegations should not to focus exclusively on leadership change in Damascus, and should rather begin confidence-building measures. Walid Muallem, the Foreign Minister from Damascus, and Ahmad Jarba, the head of the opposition coalition, attempted to match each other with accusations of atrocities committed. Seldom have diplomatic negotiations been visited by such graphic descriptions of murders and mutilations, rapes and torture – the deadly vendettas of Homs and Aleppo coming to the shores of Lake Geneva.
"The main thing is to start the process," he said, adding their talks were expected to take about a week before a pause and a second round. The foreign backers of the respective sides came in for their share of the blame for the dismemberment of Syria, with Mr Muallem accusing them of sponsoring terrorism. “Seated among us are representatives of countries who have blood of our people on their hands,” he said.
In his opening remarks, during which he clashed with Mr Ban over whether he had exceeded the 20-minute time period allocated to each speaker, Mr Muallem also said some of the states attending the summit had "Syrian blood on their hands". Mr Kerry and William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary, countered that initial peaceful protests had been met with brutal repression by Syrian security forces. They pointed out the millions of dollars spent by the international community in attempting to alleviate the humanitarian crisis and refugees flowing into neighbouring countries. Ahmed Davutoglu, the Turkish Foreign Minister, tried sarcasm, saying: “Yes we have 700,000 terrorists from Syria in our country – 8,500 child terrorists. Some of them are just a few months old.”
Directly addressing Mr Kerry, he said that only Syrians had the right to remove President Bashar Assad. Mr Muallem rounded on Mr Kerry, who had stressed that a previous meeting about the Syrian crisis, Geneva I (which took place without the regime’s participation last year), had stipulated that Mr Assad would have no role in a new political landscape. “No one, no one, Mr Kerry, has the right to withdraw legitimacy of the President other than Syrians themselves. We shall be holding a referendum on whatever happens here,” he said. “The West claims to fight terrorism publicly while they feed it secretly.”
At the sidelines of the UN-led talks, Syria's Information Minister told journalists that Mr Assad will not step down. He said other supporters of the rebels were “princes and emirs living in mud and backwardness”, by which he meant Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. The “backstabbing neighbour” – Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister – also got a name-check.
Diplomats from the world’s most powerful countries have gathered for the talks. Around 40 foreign ministers will address the summit today ahead of direct Syrian talks, which are due to begin in Geneva on Friday. The opposition’s Free Syrian Army, declared Mr Muallem, was “free to cannibalise human hearts and livers, barbecue heads, recruit child soldiers and rape women”. There were, he added, “Syrians here in this hall [who] participated in all that has happened, they implemented, facilitated the bloodshed and all at the expense of the Syrian people they claim to represent”.
Mr Ban told delegates that Syrians are responsible for the “formidable” challenge of ending the civil war in their country. He went on: “If you want to speak in the name of the Syrian people, you should not be traitors to the Syrian people or agents in the pay of enemies of the Syrian people.”
Mr Ban, hosting the meeting, attempted to restore calm, saying: “We have to have some constructive and harmonious dialogue. Please refrain from inflammatory rhetoric.”
Then, as Mr Muallem overran his allocated  speaking time, the UN Secretary-General repeatedly asked the Foreign Minister to “wrap up”. But Mr Muallem was not prepared to give up the microphone. “I came here after 12 hours in the airplane. I must finish my speech,” he said. “I have the right to give the Syrian version here in this forum, after three years of suffering. This is my right. You live in New York, I live in Syria.”
Mr Jarba, when his turn came, stuck to the time limit. He held up photographs from a report published on the eve of the conference which sought to show that the Assad regime had tortured and killed up to 11,000 prisoners. The real “terrorists and mercenaries” were the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, whose members had been fighting on behalf of President Assad, the opposition leader said.
“It is we who are engaged in a struggle against terrorism. The revolution is facing al-Assad’s terrorism – the terrorism he has brought into Syria”, said Mr Jarba. “Al-Assad cannot stay on his throne. We cannot have so many people dying because one man wants to stay on the throne. We want the Al-Assad delegation here to be a free delegation and help us build a peaceful Syria. Have we got such partners?”
There are no reasons to think there will be defections en masse from either side. But with the death toll climbing to 130,000 and the number of refugees reaching two million, there was acknowledgment that the talking should continue. “Time is like blood for the Syrian people” said Mr Jarba.
Everything Mr Muallem said was couched in terms of “fighting terrorism” but he acknowledged the need to start “rebuilding Syria’s social and material structure” and agreed that “dialogue is the foundation of this process”.
Face-to-face talks between the two sides are due to start tomorrow. Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN mediator, said both sides had shown willingness to engage on humanitarian access, local ceasefires and exchanges of prisoners.
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He urged President Assad’s government and the Western-backed opposition fighters to enter into negotiations in good faith as they meet in person for the first time. The acrimony in the fractured and wounded Syrian society was not restricted to the delegations. Out on the street, a small group of activists chanted “in spirit and fire, we will redeem you, oh Bashar” as they waved the Syrian flag, but also that of Hezbollah. A little bit further along was another protest, by the human rights group Avaaz, in which “corpses” lay in a “burnt and destroyed house”, with a man in an Assad mask standing over them.
“We know that it has been an extremely difficult path to reach this point. We have lost valuable time and many, many lives,” Mr Ban said. Murad al-Nouri had wandered from one to the other; the financial analyst, 54, had made the train journey from Geneva, where he lives, to the conference with his nine-year-old grandson, Qais. “We always thought we would go back to Syria to live, but would you go back now [and] take this boy to live there?” he asked.  “My father was imprisoned by Bashar’s father’s people and I had always felt there was need for reform and proper democracy, but both sides are behaving now in a way which is inhuman. It will be criminal if the people holding these talks cannot achieve an end to all this suffering. The Syrian people will never forgive them.”
“Let me not mince words, the challenges before you and before all of us are formidable. But your presence here raises hope,” he added in his opening speech.
But the Syrian National Coalition, the umbrella group representing the opposition, is in disarray, with little influence on rebel brigades fighting in Syria.
Iran, which is one of President Assad's major backers, was excluded from the talks on Monday, and has already said the talks will fail.
The official Iranian news agency IRNA reported that President Hassan Rouhani said that hopes for the talks succeeding are slim “because of the lack of influential players in the meeting.”
Additional reporting by AP