{"id":25616,"date":"2018-12-15T02:22:26","date_gmt":"2018-12-15T02:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25616"},"modified":"2018-12-15T02:22:26","modified_gmt":"2018-12-15T02:22:26","slug":"iran-russia-turkey-to-meet-un-envoy-next-week-on-syria-un","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25616","title":{"rendered":"Iran, Russia, Turkey to meet UN envoy next week on Syria: UN"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"105.562209602\">\n<p class=\"speakable\">The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura will hold talks with high-level officials from Iran, Russia and Turkey in Geneva early next week on setting up a constitutional committee, a UN statement said on Friday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">The talks on forming a &#8220;credible, balanced, and inclusive&#8221; committee to draft a new constitution for Syria and usher in elections will take place ahead of de Mistura&#8217;s monthly presentation to the UN Security Council set for Thursday December 20, a UN statement said on Friday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">Last month, Syria&#8217;s warring sides and mediators meeting in Kazakhstan failed to agree on the formation of a constitutional committee which is key to ending the seven-year civil war. De Mistura, whose term ends at the end of the year, called it a &#8220;missed opportunity&#8221;.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>At issue is the 50-member delegation comprising Syrian experts, civil society, independents, tribal leaders and women that de Mistura was authorised to put together by countries attending a Russian-hosted Syrian peace conference in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in January.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Agreement has already been reached on a 50-member government delegation and a delegation equal in size from the opposition for the drafting committee.<\/p>\n<p>Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said his government will only consider amendments to the current constitution, in defiance of the Sochi agreement to have the government, opposition and independents draft a new document.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this week, de Mistura said work was still ongoing to form the constitutional committee, adding that if an announcement about the committee is not made, &#8220;we will have to draw ourselves some conclusions&#8221;.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Syria&#8217;s war has killed more than 360,000 people since it started in 2011 with the police crackdown on anti-government protests.<\/p>\n<p>The Syrian government has regained control over the majority of the country&#8217;s territory since the Russian military intervened in 2015, backing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/people\/bashar-al-assad.html\">al-Assad<\/a>&#8216;s government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura will hold talks with high-level officials from Iran, Russia and Turkey in Geneva early next week on setting up a constitutional committee, a UN statement said on Friday. The talks on forming a &#8220;credible, balanced, and inclusive&#8221; committee to draft a new constitution for Syria&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":25617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}