GENOA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st July, 2020) The unity talks between the Syrian Kurdish political parties have so far failed to bring tangible results and many issues still need to be addressed, Abdul Hakim Bashar, the co-founder of the Kurdish National Council in Syria, one of the sides of the talks, told Sputnik.
The Kurdish National Council (KNC) in Syria is an umbrella group of most of the Kurdish parties in the country. Since April, KNC has been in talks with the Democratic Union Party. The two political forces have had differences for years over the power sharing in northeast of Syria. The so-called unity talks have been assisted by the United States, in particular, William Roebuck, Deputy Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS (a terrorist organization banned in Russia).
"I am fully aware of the negotiations that undergo between the Kurdish National Council and the Democratic Union Party as a first stage," Bashar said.
A group of parties loyal to the Democratic Union, called Kurdish National Unity Parties (PYNK), will join the talks at the second stage, once the political consensus has been achieved, the Kurdish politician said.
"No unity has been reached yet. There was rather an understanding of political views and issues that will be discussed later. These issues are important and substantial, so it has been considered as a statement of understanding. As for the difficulties, there are a lot of questions that still needed to be raised, including the management, security, financial sources and a Peshmerga [forces]-related topic," Bashar continued.
On June 17, the US embassy in Syria said in a statement on its Twitter account that the United States welcomed the preliminary understanding in the intra-Kurdish dialogue as an important step towards a greater cooperation.
"There are also such essential topics as the need for the Democratic Union to declare its withdrawal from the Kurdistan Workers' Party and reveal the fate of kidnapped and forcibly disappeared people in the areas that are under its control," Bashar said.
