MOSCOW: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Iran must take part in a proposed international conference to end Syria’s civil war, but that Western states wanted to limit the participants and possibly predetermine the outcome of the talks.
Conflicting comments from Russia and the West over Iran’s role in the possible meeting have added to disagreements which already threaten to derail the conference proposed by Moscow and Washington last week.
“Among some of our Western colleagues, there is a desire to narrow the circle of external participants and begin the process from a very small group of countries in a framework which, in essence, would predetermine the negotiating teams, agenda, and maybe even the outcome of talks,” Lavrov said in an interview posted on the Foreign Ministry website yesterday.
Iran, which supports Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, has welcomed the proposal and expressed hopes that it would be a part of the process.
Its desire to participate in a June 2012 meeting on Syria hosted by the United Nations in Geneva was a bone of contention between Washington and Moscow.
“One must not exclude a country like Iran from this process because of geopolitical preferences. It is a very important external player. But there is no agreement on this yet,” Lavrov said in the interview given to a Lebanese television station.
The West is loath to see Iran, which has grown increasingly isolated on the international stage because of Western fears it is developing nuclear weapons, being at any such talks. The meeting, which US Secretary of State John Kerry has said would likely take place in early June, will aim to have the same global powers that attended the 2012 meeting, but this time include representatives of the Syrian government and opposition.
Last year the foreign ministers of the UN Security Council’s five permanent members — Russia, the United States, China, France and Britain — all attended the Geneva talks along with Qatar, Turkey, Kuwait, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Arab League head Nabil Elaraby and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
With Syria’s factional and sectarian rivalries more entrenched than ever, however, it is far from clear the warring parties are ready to negotiate with each other. Most opposition figures have ruled out talks unless Assad and his inner circle are excluded from any future transitional government. Lavrov also said Saudi Arabia and leading backer of the rebel forces which did not participate in last year’s meeting, should be present. REUTERS
