Syrian Kurds raise slogans outside the United Nations office in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdistan region, during a demonstration opposing a military operation by the Turkish army in Syria's Afrin on Monday. - AFP
Sochi (Russia) - Regime-backer Moscow has invited 1,600 people to the talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
Published: Mon 29 Jan 2018, 9:15 PM
Last updated: Mon 29 Jan 2018, 11:19 PM
Delegates on Monday arrived for the first Syria peace congress in Russia, but expectations for the dialogue were tempered after the war-torn country's main opposition group said it would boycott the event.
Regime-backer Moscow has invited 1,600 people to the talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi as part of a broader push to consolidate its influence in the region and start hammering out a path to a political solution to end the bloody conflict.
Only a fraction of the invitees are set to participate in the event, however, according to a list of participants seen by AFP which has about 350 people on it.
The aim of the Tuesday congress is to bring Syria closer to creating a post-war constitution, after two days of separate UN-backed talks in Vienna last week closed without any sign the warring sides had met face-to-face to discuss the groundwork for the document.
The Kremlin has downplayed expectations of the event, with presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov telling journalists on Monday that "breakthroughs in the task of political regulation in Syria are hardly possible."
He added however that under-representation will not "disrupt this congress or undermine its importance," calling the Sochi talks a "very important" step toward peace.
The Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC), the country's main opposition group, said following the talks in Vienna on Thursday and Friday that it would not attend the Sochi congress. The SNC accused President Bashar Al Assad's regime and its Russian backers of continuing to rely on military might - and showing no willingness to enter into honest negotiations - as the war in which more than 340,000 people have already died approaches its seventh year.
More than three dozen other Syrian rebel groups, including influential religious outfits, previously said they would not come to Sochi.
And authorities from Syria's Kurdish autonomous region said on Sunday they would not participate because of an ongoing offensive on the Kurdish enclave of Afrin by Turkey, which supports Syrian rebels and is co-sponsoring the congress along with regime-backer Iran. Moscow, which has spearheaded rounds of talks from the start of last year in Kazakhstan's Astana, initially hoped to convene the congress in Sochi last November but those efforts collapsed following a lack of agreement among co-sponsors.
Bringing Syria closer to creating a constitution
> Regime-backer Moscow has invited 1,600 people to the talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
> Only a fraction of the invitees are set to participate in the event.
> The aim of the Tuesday congress is to bring Syria closer to creating a post-war constitution.
> The Kremlin has downplayed expectations of the event.
> Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov telling journalists on Monday that "breakthroughs in the task of political regulation in Syria are hardly possible
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