Saudi Arabia is seeking to increase its influence on the Syrian Constitutional Committee by reducing Turkey's role and by replacing some members of the opposition's Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC) at its ongoing meeting in Riyadh, the secretary of the Syrian opposition movement Popular Diplomacy, Mahmoud Afandi, told Sputnik on Friday
GENOA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th December, 2019) Saudi Arabia is seeking to increase its influence on the Syrian Constitutional Committee by reducing Turkey's role and by replacing some members of the opposition's Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC) at its ongoing meeting in Riyadh, the secretary of the Syrian opposition movement Popular Diplomacy, Mahmoud Afandi, told Sputnik on Friday."Today there is a regular SNC conference in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia will try to change eight members of the Riyadh platform of the SNC, which includes also Cairo and Moscow platforms. These eight persons are supported by Turkey, but Saudi Arabia, seeking to reduce influence of Turkey on the constitutional committee and on the SNC in general, will replace them with those who are controlled by Saudi Arabia," Afandi said.
According to the opposition figure, four of these eight SNC members are on the constitutional committee as well and are likely to be replaced there, too.
"These people are Yahya Aridi [SNC spokesman], Bassma Kodmani [academic, co-founder of think tank the Arab Reform Initiative], Tariq al-Kurdi and Awad al-Ali [defected officer, minister of defense in the 'government in exile']," Afandi continued.
Although Saudi Arabia has wanted to strengthen its influence on the constitutional committee for quite some time, this decision was made only recently after the incident with the exclusion of a representative from Moscow platform, Mohannad Dlykan, from the SNC and from the constitutional committee, Afandi added. All members of the SNC who voted for his exclusion were supported by Turkey, while Riyadh did not want to spoil relations with the Moscow platform, Afandi explained.
On Tuesday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem told the RT broadcaster that members of the Syrian Constitutional Committee lacked mutual trust. In his address to the Security Council last week, United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen said the committee "is and will remain fragile."
The date of the next meeting of the committee in Geneva has not been set yet, since the sides cannot agree on the agenda.
