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In Syria Talks, Even the Smallest Details Are Negotiated First Round of Syria Talks Is Set to Begin After a Shaky Opening
(about 11 hours later)
MONTREUX, Switzerland — As the opposing Syrian delegations began moving to Geneva for new talks scheduled for Friday, Lakhdar Brahimi, the international mediator, was meeting separately with both sides on Thursday to lay the ground for face-to-face talks, reflecting the daunting challenges of seeking a political resolution to Syria’s highly polarized conflict. GENEVA — The fragile efforts to begin a diplomatic process to end the war in Syria seemed on Thursday night to be on track to produce a first round of negotiations, even though the two sides did not appear ready to meet face to face as had initially been hoped.
The last-minute scramble came because the opposition delegation was named only a few days ago amid internal disagreements. Mr. Brahimi, the joint Syria envoy for the United Nations and the Arab League, had initially planned to hold preparatory meetings with the delegations in December to establish how the talks could be conducted and where there might be potential for agreement. The Syrian government and the fractious opposition coalition said that they were ready to continue the efforts, and government and opposition delegations were set to meet Friday morning in two adjacent rooms, with a veteran United Nations diplomat, Lakhdar Brahimi, shuttling back and forth.
Late on Wednesday, Mr. Brahimi said he had indications that the sides might be ready to talk about prisoner exchanges and cease-fires. Yet the very act of sitting down at a table together remains something that requires “talks about talks” to set up. The sense of progress described by opposition, government and international sponsors alike was in part because of the extraordinarily low expectations for the first meeting between a Syrian opposition delegation that demands the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad and a government delegation that insists the purpose of the conference is to fight terrorism and that the presidency is “a red line.”
In an interview Wednesday night, Fayssal Mekdad, the Syrian deputy foreign minister, said the two sides would sit facing each other, each behind its own long table, with Mr. Brahimi in the middle — a plan that sounded as if it could have been conceived to allow the sides to say they had not sat at one table together. “The aim for tomorrow is to make sure that neither side walks out,” a Western diplomat said Thursday. Asked how he rated the chances that the talks would last through the day, the diplomat cast his eyes toward the ceiling for a moment. “I think there’s a good chance,” he said.
Such issues of protocol loomed similarly large at the opening talks to Wednesday, participants said later. There were no flags displayed at the plenary session, they said, to avoid a situation in which the official Syrian flag stood side by side with the flag of the uprising, an earlier iteration from the country’s first postcolonial government. And the opposition delegation arrived a few minutes late, members said, in part to avoid shaking hands with the government delegation. The rockiness that characterized the opening statements on Wednesday in Montreux was still apparent in the wrangling over details. No flags will be displayed, since each side abhors the other’s banner.
“Both sides agreed it was too early to sit together, as there is absolutely no common ground,” said Louay Safi, a spokesman for the coalition.
Ahmad al-Jarba, the president of the Syrian exile opposition coalition, will not be on the opposition’s negotiating team. No one would say why, but the government holds him in particular contempt, and there was speculation that his absence was a government demand.
Mr. Jarba, at an evening news conference, said it was not important for him to be in the room personally, and that the delegation attending would be fully empowered by him to negotiate on the coalition’s behalf — a statement that was progress for an opposition coalition long criticized as deeply divided, full of competing egos and unable to work for a common goal.
The government said it was committed to continuing the talks and that even a transition could be discussed — once “the issue of terrorism is addressed.”
From its early moments on Wednesday, the conference on Syria was marked by acrimony, when Syria’s foreign minister described Syrian rebels as “evil” and ignored appeals by Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, to avoid invective or even to yield the floor.From its early moments on Wednesday, the conference on Syria was marked by acrimony, when Syria’s foreign minister described Syrian rebels as “evil” and ignored appeals by Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, to avoid invective or even to yield the floor.
By the end of the day, the sense that the new peace talks were headed for trouble was compounded when the proceedings ended without any hint of progress toward imposing local cease-fires or opening humanitarian corridors for the delivery of food and medicine to besieged towns and cities. By the end of the day, the sense that the talks were headed for trouble was compounded when the proceedings ended without any hint of progress toward imposing local cease-fires or opening humanitarian corridors for the delivery of food and medicine to besieged towns and cities.
At an evening news conference here, Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Jaafari, said stopping terrorism, not sharing power, needed to be the priority when the two sides sat down on Friday to discuss a political solution to the bloody conflict, a stance that also appeared to promise more confrontation. The government, for its part, insisted it was committed to continuing the talks.
Putting the best face on the meeting, Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters on Wednesday night that it was significant that senior diplomats from 40 countries and organizations had gathered in the lakeside Swiss city of Montreux to initiate the conference. Mr. Kerry insisted that he had always known that the talks would be “tough” and described the conference as a process, which he implied could last for months or even years. “No way we shall leave the room, absolutely,” Fayssal Mekdad, the deputy foreign minister, said in an interview. “Even if nobody else is left.”
Several Syrians also expressed hope that the conference signaled the start of a process in which Syrians might eventually overcome their differences. “We have to agree on a formula where all terrorist organizations should be fought by all Syrians and be expelled,” he said. “Those who are financing, supporting, arming and harboring terrorists should be made accountable.”
“It’s a historic moment,” said Ibrahim al-Hamidi, a veteran journalist for the Saudi-owned newspaper Al Hayat who is originally from the northern Syrian city of Idlib. “After three years of military struggle, when the opposition tried very hard to destroy the regime, and the regime tried very hard to crush the opposition, this is the first time the two delegations sit down in one room under U.N. auspices.” While few dispute that extremist Islamist militant groups have taken root in rebel-held Syria or that foreign donors have sustained them, the government has typically referred to all its opponents as terrorists. And while Geneva 1 calls for foreign states to stop financing militias in Syria, the government insists that does not include its support from Iran and the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah.
But it was hard to escape the sense that the conditions for a productive negotiation between the Syrian government and the opposition had yet to be set. Mr. Kerry tried to set a positive tone on the eve of the conference by engaging in a calculated display of comity with Mr. Ban and Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister — a gesture that appeared intended to play down the lobbying effort by the United States to persuade the United Nations to withdraw its invitation to Iran to attend the meeting. “Do we look happy?” Mr. Lavrov said as the three held hands for a photo. Diplomats found hope in common language used by both the government and the opposition. Both sides, over the past two days, have declared that the Geneva 1 accords, the basis for the current talks, are “a single package” or “a basket” — that is, none of the goals they set out can be discussed in isolation of the others, including a transitional government, humanitarian aid and an end to violence.
But when the conference opened on Wednesday sharp differences came to the fore. Mr. Kerry said it was unthinkable that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria could play a role in a transitional administration that would govern the country as part of a political settlement. The establishment of such a transitional body by “mutual consent” of the Assad government and the Syrian opposition is the major goal of the conference. “The right to lead a country does not come from torture, nor barrel bombs, nor Scud missiles,” Mr. Kerry said. While the opposition focuses on a transitional government, and the government focuses on “fighting terrorism,” both of those goals fall within the Geneva 1 package.
Mr. Lavrov challenged the American insistence that Mr. Assad be excluded from a transitional administration, arguing that the conference had to “refrain from any attempt to predetermine the outcome of the process.” Wednesday’s opening statements in Montreux, before an audience of representatives from more than 40 countries, were characterized by harsh accusations and hard-line positions.
While the stark differences between the American and Russian positions were outlined in civil tones, that diplomatic restraint was abandoned when Walid al-Moallem, the Syrian foreign minister, who will lead the Syrian government’s face-to-face talks with the opposition, took the floor and accused Arab nations of financing terrorism and conspiring to destroy his country. But the Western diplomat noted that the Syrian government position seemed to moderate over the course of the day, particularly after an inflammatory opening speech by the foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, met with nearly unanimous disapproval.
Speaking for more than 30 minutes, Mr. Moallem also accused insurgents of “sexual jihad” by using brainwashed women as sex slaves and engaging in incest. When Mr. Ban asked that Mr. Moallem wind up his lengthy speech, the Syrian official shot back, “You live in New York, I live in Syria.” The diplomat said it was possible that the Russians, the Syrians’ most powerful ally, had urged them to rein in their language. Mr. Moallem did not appear at a news conference Wednesday night, but instead the smoother Bashar Jaafari, Syria’s representative to the United Nations in New York.
Mr. Jaafari, the diplomat noted, stated that the Syrians were “here to implement Geneva 1,” something the foreign minister had not conceded.
In between, representatives of 40 countries had spoken, and all, even China, Russia, India and other countries the Syrian government considers sympathetic, had emphasized the importance of adhering to Geneva 1, including its goal of a transitional government chosen by “mutual consent.”
“The regime heard the message,” the diplomat said. “To stick with what Moallem said will leave Syria completely isolated.”
Iran, Syria’s closest ally, has declined to endorse Geneva 1, which resulted in its invitation being rescinded. Mr. Mekdad called this an American plot to stack the conference with “anti-Syrian” countries. Asked if there were 40 countries in the world that support the Syrian government, he said, “absolutely” but did not list them.
At Davos on Thursday, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, called for free and fair elections in Syria, part of a speech generally regarded as conciliatory to the West.
For its part, the opposition coalition needs to be seen as delivering something after its decision, controversial among its base, to attend the talks, Western diplomats said. That means staying and talking.
On Thursday, Mr. Jarba said the coalition’s top priority remained Mr. Assad’s departure. But afterward, his chief of staff said that the immediate priorities were to talk about humanitarian access, cease-fires and prisoner exchanges, the confidence-building measures that the United States and Russia hope could build momentum for the political process.
Coalition members and their supporters were riding high, feeling that they had come across as the more statesmanlike of the two parties.
“One thing they’ve gotten good at is going to conferences,” joked Adnan Hadad, an opposition activist from Aleppo attending the meeting as a journalist, a dig at the coalition members’ frequent stays in hotels trying to shore up international support and iron out internal differences.