ASTANA: Russia, Turkey and Iran failed to make any tangible progress in setting up a Syrian constitutional committee at a meeting in the Kazakh capital Astana, the office of UN envoy Staffan de Mistura said in a statement on Thursday.
The UN envoy on Syria said there had been “no tangible progress in overcoming the 10-month stalemate on the composition of the constitutional committee,” following talks sponsored by opposition-backer Turkey and Syrian regime supporters Russia and Iran in Astana.
The constitutional committee is viewed as a vital element in reaching a political settlement in the country.
“This was the last occasion of an Astana meeting in 2018 and has, sadly for the Syrian people, been a missed opportunity to accelerate the establishment of a credible, balanced and inclusive, Syrian-owned, Syrian-led, UN-facilitated constitutional committee.”
De Mistura, who announced his resignation last month, capped his term as peace envoy with two days of talks in Astana.
The meeting in Astana was “a missed opportunity to accelerate the establishment of a credible, balanced and inclusive, Syrian-owned, Syrian-led, UN-facilitated constitutional committee,” the statement said.
The two-day negotiations, concluding on Thursday, are the 11th in Astana since Moscow began a diplomatic push in early 2017 that effectively sidelined other talks on Syria led by the UN.
Syria’s grinding civil war has killed more than 360,000 people and displaced millions.
The three countries said in a joint statement issued after the talks that they would “intensify” consultations to establish the committee as soon as possible.
“The Russian side views the outcome of the conference as positive,” Russia’s Syria envoy Alexander Lavrentiev told a briefing in Astana after the talks.
Moscow, Tehran and Ankara also said in the joint statement they were concerned with cease-fire violations in the Idlib demilitarized zone in northwest Syria and “would step up their efforts to ensure observance,” but stressed the need to continue to “fight against terrorism” there.
This would include enhancing the work of the Iranian-Russian-Turkish coordination center, the statement said.
Regime-ally Russia and Turkey, which backs Syrian fighters, in September agreed to create a de-militarization buffer zone around the opposition-held Idlib enclave.
But shelling exchanges have been common since then and the first airstrikes since the deal hit the area on Sunday, after Russia and Damascus accused Idlib-based fighters of using chemical weapons to attack the regime-held city of Aleppo on Saturday, a charge they deny.
The Astana talks have seen the US and other Western countries keeping at arm’s length over Syria.
A joint communique agreed by the three sponsors targeted Washington’s continued military presence in the country.
The guarantors “rejected all attempts to create new realities on the ground under the pretext of combating terrorism,” it said.
Earlier this week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the US of using the presence of Daesh in southern Syria as an excuse to keep forces stationed there. Lavrentiev also complained of the extended US presence during the talks in Astana.
The next set of Syria negotiations in Astana are scheduled for early February, according to the joint communique.
Syria’s grinding seven-year civil war has killed more than 360,000 people and displaced millions.
