{"id":26046,"date":"2018-12-18T17:24:26","date_gmt":"2018-12-18T17:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=26046"},"modified":"2018-12-18T17:24:26","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T17:24:26","slug":"russia-iran-turkey-seeking-deal-on-new-syria-constitution-body","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=26046","title":{"rendered":"Russia, Iran, Turkey seeking deal on new Syria constitution body"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Russia, Iran, Turkey agree on convening committee to draw up new Syria constitution<\/h2>\n
\n

\nGENEVA: Russia’s foreign minister\u00a0Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday\u00a0the foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey have agreed to facilitate convening the first session of a committee to draft a new Syrian constitution early next year.
Lavrov spoke in Geneva following consultations with the foreign ministers of Iran and Turkey.
He says the three leaders hope the steps will lead to the launch of a “viable and lasting Syrian-led, Syrian-owned and UN-facilitated political process.”
The 150-member committee is intended to represent the government, the opposition and civil society and is seen by the UN\u00a0as key to holding free elections and ending the seven-year civil war.
The .. Syria envoy was authorized to put together such a committee at a Russian-hosted peace conference in Sochi on Jan. 30.<\/p>\n

\nStaffan de Mistura, UN Special Envoy for Syria who steps down on Dec. 31, has tried since January to clinch agreement on the identity of 150 members of a new constitutional committee to revitalize a stalled peace process.
President Bashar Assad\u2019s government and the opposition fighting to topple him have each submitted a list of 50 names. But Russia, Iran and Turkey have haggled over the final 50 members from civil society and \u201cindependent\u201d backgrounds, diplomats say.
\u201cThe three countries are coming with a proposal for the third list, which has been the heart of the problem,\u201d one diplomat following the negotiations closely told Reuters.
Turkey and other nations would consider working with Assad if he won a democratic election, Cavusoglu said on Sunday.
Turkey supports rebels who control part of northwest Syria. A year ago, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan described Assad as a terrorist and said it was impossible for Syrian peacemaking efforts to continue with him.
Assad, whose forces have reclaimed most of Syria with Russian and Iranian support apart from Idlib, a northwestern province, has clung to power throughout the conflict and is widely seen as being loath to yield power after it ends.
The Damascus government has previously brushed off UN-led efforts to set up a constitutional committee.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Moualem, in comments reported by state media on Monday, said it was \u201cearly to talk about\u201d the constitutional committee starting work. He blamed attempts at \u201cinterference\u201d by Western states for the hold-up in its formation, in addituon to \u201cobstacles\u201d laid by Turkey.
Syrian authorities have only ever signalled a readiness for \u201camendments\u201d to the existing constitution and also said these must be put to a referendum.
De Mistura said at the weekend that the constitutional committee could be a starting point for political progress.
\u201cIt does touch, for instance, on presidential powers, it could and should be touching on how elections are done, on division of power, in other words a big issue,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia, Iran, Turkey agree on convening committee to draw up new Syria constitution GENEVA: Russia’s foreign minister\u00a0Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday\u00a0the foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey have agreed to facilitate convening the first session of a committee to draft a new Syrian constitution early next year.Lavrov spoke in Geneva following consultations with the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":26047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26046","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\/26046","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=26046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}