Syrian Opposition Disagrees on Some Members of SCC Ahead of New Meeting - Representative

GENOA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd January, 2021) Syrian opposition groups have disagreements regarding the representation in the Syrian Constitutional Committee (CC) as its next meeting in Geneva is approaching, Ahmad Shbib, member of the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) of the Syrian opposition and representative of Cairo platform, told Sputnik.

The next meeting of the Syrian Constitutional Committee mediated by UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen will take place in Geneva from January 25-29.

"In the beginning of this month, Cairo platform notified in a letter about its desire to replace one of its members in the High Negotiations Committee and in the Syrian Constitutional Committee. This replacement, despite being completely justified, caused misunderstanding among various components of the HNC, and the National Coordination Commission (NCC) rejected it, seeing it as something motivated against it. However, Cairo platform had the full right to replace its members," Shbib said.

He added that, nevertheless, the replacement took place, as opposition groups within the HNC and the Constitutional Committee have the right to do so. Shbib said that NCC and Moscow platform, which had objections against the replacement, even sent a letter to Pedersen expressing their concerns, but this step did not bring any results.

According to another opposition figure, secretary of the movement Popular Diplomacy Mahmoud Afandi, these disagreements between Moscow and Cairo platforms were also raised during the meeting of the representatives of the two groups with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday.

"The reason behind these disputes is the fact that now the Syrian Constitutional Committee is almost fully influenced by pro-Turkish opposition," Afandi said.

Representative of the Moscow platform Mohannad Dlykan told Sputnik on Thursday that apart from the CC and peace process in general, "some issues within the Syrian opposition" were discussed at the meeting with Lavrov.

Addressing the Security Council on Wednesday, Pedersen said he expected the coming session of the CC to be "very important" and the two co-chairs of the committee to "establish effective and operational working methods so that the meetings are better organized and more focused." He expressed a readiness to ensure that the committee begins moving from preparing a constitutional reform to drafting one.