GENEVA—A U.N. official said Syrian peace talks will begin in Geneva as planned Friday, despite an ongoing boycott by the main Syrian opposition group which continues to stay away pending assurances from the U.N. chief on the implementation of Security Council resolutions related to humanitarian issues.
U.N. Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura will begin by meeting the government’s delegation, which is headed by the country’s ambassador to the U.N. Bashar Jaafari, according to de Mistura’s spokeswoman Khawla Mattar. She said he would later meet other participants in the talks, including civil society representatives.
Syrian TV said the government delegation arrived in Geneva Friday. It did not elaborate.
The indirect talks are part of a process outlined in a U.N. resolution last month that envisages an 18-month timetable for a political transition in Syria, including the drafting of a new constitution and elections.
The opposition is facing ongoing disputes over which parties will attend and has come under criticism for including the militant Army of Islam group that controls wide areas near Damascus and is considered a terrorist organization by the Syrian government and Russia.
The main Syrian opposition group, known as the Higher Negotiating Committee, or HNC, said it was still waiting for an official response from the United Nations about a list of concerns.
Ahmad Ramadan, a senior official with the Syrian National Coalition, which is part of the HNC, said the opposition will boycott the talks until it receives assurances on the implementation of U.N. Security Council resolutions on lifting the sieges on rebel held areas and halting bombardment of civilians in Syria.
“There cannot be any negotiations as long as the humanitarian issues have not been discussed or implemented,” he said.
Basma Kodmani, a member of the opposition’s negotiating team, said the HNC is now studying whether their delegation will come to Geneva to raise these concerns with the U.N. officials or stay in Saudi Arabia where they can raise them from a distance.
Ramadan said that de Mistura sent a letter on Thursday to the head of the HNC, Riad Hijab, which was deemed unsatisfactory. He said the U.N. envoy wrote that the opposition’s demands were reasonable and that humanitarian issues should be “above negotiations,” but that he was powerless to implement them himself, adding that negotiations were the best way to force everyone to implement those resolutions.
In Syria, the official Tishrin newspaper boasted that the no-show by the Saudi and Turkey-backed opposition in Geneva “reflects the collective flight of terrorist groups backed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey from the political table, following their collapses on the battlefield.”
