{"id":26564,"date":"2018-12-22T16:22:49","date_gmt":"2018-12-22T16:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=26564"},"modified":"2018-12-22T16:22:49","modified_gmt":"2018-12-22T16:22:49","slug":"constitutional-committee-will-not-be-formed-by-years-end-un-syria-envoy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=26564","title":{"rendered":"Constitutional committee will not be formed by year\u2019s end: UN Syria envoy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nUNITED NATIONS, United States: The UN envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, on Thursday acknowledged that a committee tasked with writing a new constitution for the war-wracked country would not be in place by year\u2019s end as was hoped.
\u201cWe have nearly completed the work of putting in place a constitutional committee to draft a constitutional reform, as a contribution to the political process \u2014 but there is an extra mile to go,\u201d De Mistura told the Security Council.
\u201cI deeply regret what has not been achieved, and I am sorry more was not possible,\u201d he added, noting there were issues with a list of participants proposed by the government in Damascus.
According to the UN plan, the committee would have 150 members: 50 chosen by the regime of President Bashar Assad, 50 by the opposition and 50 by the United Nations, the latter group made up of technical experts and representatives of civil society.
But Damascus blocked the composition of the third group, and recently suggested its own \u201c17 name changes\u201d to the list, according to a diplomat who asked not to be named.
Although Damascus\u2019 objection was backed by Russia, Iran and Turkey, the UN said the changes would alter the balance of the group and said it could only accept six of them.
\u201cThe United Nations, having examined the names, assessed that we would not feel comfortable yet giving the UN stamp of legitimacy to all 50 of them as meeting the necessary criteria of credibility and balance \u2014 hence the need for going an extra-mile,\u201d De Mistura said, calling some of those Syria had sought to exclude \u201cnatural bridge-builders.\u201d
While he failed to finalize the composition of the committee, De Mistura, who will leave the post next month, said \u201cwe have identified and put in place some of the key building blocks on which the future process can build.\u201d
During the debate at the Security Council, Britain and France accused Damascus of blocking the UN envoy\u2019s efforts, and reprimanded Russian and Iran \u2014 Assad\u2019s main backers \u2014 for failing to exert their influence to sway the regime.
\u201cLet me be clear,\u201d said Britain\u2019s UN ambassador Rodney Hunter. \u201cThere will be no reconstruction money, there will be no legitimacy for the regime, there will be no facilitation for returns of refugees \u2014 they will not be discussed or even considered until we get this political process moving,\u201d he said.
Francois Delattre, his French counterpart, said the new list was made up of people that Russia, Turkey and Iran \u201cknew were unacceptable and put the entire credibility of the future committee at risk.\u201d
More than 360,000 people have been killed in the war, which began in March 2011 as an uprising against Assad but has morphed into a complex conflict with myriad armed groups, many of whom are foreign-backed.
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UNITED NATIONS, United States: The UN envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, on Thursday acknowledged that a committee tasked with writing a new constitution for the war-wracked country would not be in place by year\u2019s end as was hoped.\u201cWe have nearly completed the work of putting in place a constitutional committee to draft a constitutional…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":26565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26564","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\/26564","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=26564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}