BEIRUT // Syria’s main opposition group said on Tuesday before it would attend peace talks the international community must “prove its seriousness” by forcing Damascus to agree on trust-building measures.
The comments illustrate the huge hurdles that lie ahead in bringing the warring sides together, even as world powers backing the conference announced January 22 as the date for the first face-to-face talks between the sides.
“We did not make a final decision yet on our participation in the Geneva conference,” the Syrian National Coalition chief, Ahmad Al Jarba, said in Cairo. He said his group has indicated its desire to go, “but we think that the Syrian regime is the one which doesn’t want to go to Geneva 2 but the Russians are putting pressure on them to attend.”
The opposition had previously said there is no use talking to the government unless it could lead to the president, Bashar Al Assad, stepping down, and that negotiations for their own sake would merely prolong the conflict.
In a further sign of the obstacles still facing the proposed talks, the head of the coalition’s military wing told Al Jazeera that “the conditions are not suitable for holding Geneva 2 at the set date”.
The Free Syrian Army commander Gen Salim Idris, who holds nominal control over a loose-knit network of mainstream opposition brigades, also said that the rebels “will not stop fighting, either before the conference or while it is taking place”.
In Damascus, the dissident Hassan Abdel Azim said the Syria-based opposition tolerated by the regime was willing to go to the talks in a single delegation alongside SNC members.
“There are those in the coalition who, like us, want a political solution. We propose that we set up with those people a single delegation,” said Abdel Azim, who heads the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change.
“We are ready to coordinate with Coalition dissidents who want a political solution, and to establish alongside them a common vision and mechanisms for negotiation,” he added.
Several Islamist battalions fighting Assad’s forces had in September warned against any negotiations with the regime, and said anyone who did go to such talks would be branded a traitor.
Previous attempts to bring the two sides together have failed, mainly because of disputes over who should represent the opposition and the government, Mr Al Assad’s future role in the country, and whether Iran, Saudi Arabia and other regional powers should be attend. The UN set the date of the so-called Geneva 2 on Monday.
Yesterday, Iran said it would take part in talks – if it was invited.
“Participation of Iran in Geneva 2 is in our view an important contribution to the resolution of the problem. We have said all along that if Iran is invited, we will participate without any preconditions,” said Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif.
A full list of participants has not yet been decided on.
The coalition reiterated that there can be no role for Mr Al Assad in any future transitional government. It also urged the international community to pressure Mr Al Assad’s government to secure humanitarian corridors so that aid can reach besieged opposition held areas of the country.
The Syrian government has repeatedly said it will not go to Geneva to hand over power, and has pushed offensives on several fronts in recent weeks that have strengthened its position ahead of the proposed talks.
Mr Al Assad’s forces are currently on the attack in the rugged Qalamoun region north of the capital and along the Lebanese border. Government airstrikes killed at least seven people in the Qalamoun town of Nabek yesterday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
South-west of Damascus, meanwhile, a suicide car bombing outside a bus station in the town of Sumariyah killed at least 15 people and wounded more than 30, Syrian state TV said.
The observatory also put the death toll at 15, saying nine of the dead were civilians and six were government troops.
Also yesterday, the World Health Organisation said it has discovered two additional cases of the highly contagious polio virus in Syria, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 17.
Sona Bari, an official with the UN agency, said the new cases are in Aleppo and in rural Damascus – far from where the first outbreak was discovered in the north-east province of Deir El Zour in early November.
Those cases were the first discovered in Syria in more than a decade, caused by the collapse of the health system in conflict areas.
Following the outbreak, the UN began its largest polio vaccination campaign in the region’s history, trying to vaccinate and revaccinate 20 million children from Iraq to Turkey.
* Associated Press with additional reporting by Reuters and Agence France-Presse