MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 31st March, 2021) The pro-government delegation from Damascus may meet directly for the first time with Syrian opposition at the next constitutional committee meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday.
"We recently talked to [UN special envoy for Syria] Geir Pedersen, we also talked to the government of Bashar Assad and to our opposition partners. We are encouraging them to reach out to each other. And the next meeting that as we hoped and still hope, will take place before the start of the holy month of Ramadan, should be a qualitatively new meeting, because for the first time there is an agreement that the heads of the so-called pro-government and opposition delegations will directly meet with each other," Lavrov said at the middle East Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club.
Lavrov recalled that Pedersen welcomed this arrangement coordinated with Moscow's mediation efforts.
"If the West has complaints about the fact that it [the constitutional committee] works slowly, let them probably draw conclusions from their behavior and behave more constructively in the future. I do not see a tragedy in the fact that the constitutional committee is working slowly," the minister said.
According to Lavrov, the West has put forward many conditions to Assad, most of which are almost impossible to fulfill.
In a bid to solve the Syrian conflict, Russia, Turkey and Iran launched the so-called Astana talks in 2017 so that all conflicting sides can negotiate a peaceful settlement. The 150-member Syrian constitutional committee with equal representation of the government, opposition and civil society, was launched on October 30, 2019, to work toward drafting a new constitution. The smaller drafting body of 45 members is expected to work on constitutional initiatives, while the larger body will be responsible for adopting them.
The latest meeting of the constitutional committee, which was held in Geneva in January, was qualified by Pedersen as disappointing, since the sides did not reach an agreement on the procedure for negotiations within the small group.
