Syria regime told to offer concrete transition proposals

UN mediator Staffan de Mistura calls on Assad's negotiators to present detailed plan next week as he adjourns talks for weekend break.

UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura speaks to the media after a round of negotiations at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on March 18, 2016. Salvatore Di Nolfi / EPAShow less

Geneva // The UN’s Syria envoy on Friday urged Damascus to make concrete proposals on political transition “next week”, ratcheting up pressure on the regime to move peace talks in Geneva forward.

As he ended a week of negotiations, United Nations mediator Staffan de Mistura said he was “still detecting large distances” between the government and main opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC).

He met with both sides on Friday before a weekend pause in the talks aimed at ending five-years of civil war that has killed more than 270,000 people and displaced millions.

The UN envoy restated his praise of the HNC for submitting a proposal outlining its vision for a new Syrian government.

But he said he had not yet received a detailed plan from the government.

“I hope next week ... that we will get their opinion, their details, on how they see the political transition taking place”, de Mistura said.

Meanwhile. Syrian rebel factions condemned a declaration of federalism in Kurdish-controlled regions of northern Syria and vowed to resist it by force, a day after those areas voted to seek autonomy.

A statement from a number of rebel groups, some of whom are represented in the main opposition body that is participating in peace talks, said the federalism announcement was a project to divide Syria.

“We categorically reject the declaration ... regarding an autonomously-run or federal region in northern Syria and we consider it to be a dangerous step aimed at partitioning Syria,” about 70 rebel factions said in a statement posted online.

“The unity of Syria’s people and land, and our rejection of any plans for partition or any other design that could lead to partition ... constitute a red line,” they said.

Signatories to the statement included the powerful Jaish Al Islam and the Jabha Shamiya.

Syria’s Kurdish-controlled northern regions voted on Thursday to seek autonomy under a federal system, drawing rebukes from the HNC, the Damascus government, Turkey and Washington.

The rebel statement said this was “exploitation” of the Syrian uprising that began five years ago and descended into civil war, and condemned what it said were attempts by “groups ... which took control of parts of Syrian land to establish their racial, nationalist and sectarian entities”.

It compared Kurdish groups to ISIL, and said the YPG militia and its political arm the PYD were terrorists.

The Kurds control more 10 per cent of Syria’s territory and three-quarters of its border with Turkey, and the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) are considered one of the most effective forces fighting ISIL.

The Kurds have however been excluded from the UN-mediated Geneva process that has brought regime and opposition representatives together for indirect negotiations.

The vote to unite three Kurdish-controlled provinces in a federal system appears aimed at creating a self-run entity within Syria, a status that Kurds have enjoyed in neighbouring Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

The three Kurdish-controlled regions agreed at a conference in Rmeilan in north-east Syria to establish the self-administered “federal democratic system of Rojava – Northern Syria”, officials announced. Rojava is the Kurdish name for north Syria.

Also on Friday, hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets across opposition strongholds in Syria to mark the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of the revolt against president Bashar Al Assad’s regime.

Along with the three-starred, tricolour flag used by the opposition, activists in the war-ravaged city of Aleppo held up a banner that read: “Down with federalism.”

* Agence France-Presse