{"id":39149,"date":"2019-04-27T03:24:10","date_gmt":"2019-04-27T03:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39149"},"modified":"2019-04-27T03:24:10","modified_gmt":"2019-04-27T03:24:10","slug":"muslims-christians-join-forces-to-fight-egyptian-church-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39149","title":{"rendered":"Muslims, Christians join forces to fight Egyptian church fire"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nJEDDAH:\u00a0Two-day talks on Syria concluded on Friday in Astana, Kazakhstan, without notable progress on forming a constitutional committee to drive a political settlement in the war-torn country.<\/p>\n

\nA joint statement by the three cosponsors \u2014 Iran, Russia and Turkey \u2014 said the meeting had broached the issue of the constitutional committee with the UN special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen. Further talks in Geneva would be needed, it added.<\/p>\n

\nSyrian opposition spokesman Yahya Al-Aridi blamed the Assad regime for the stalemate in the talks, telling Arab News: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t want a political solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nHe said: \u201cThe regime in particular is obstructing the formation of the constitutional committee in accordance with UN resolution 2254. The regime gets support from Iran in creating hurdles.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nHe added: \u201cRussia seems to consider itself a substitute to the UN, when in fact the UN should be the one in charge and the facilitator of negotiations and implementing (resolution) 2254.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nAl-Aridi said the Astana process had a two-fold goal from the start. \u201cThe military aspect \u2026 was aborted into something called de-escalation zones, but the regime and its supporters turned them into escalation zones,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe humanitarian aspect was to establish confidence-building measures, but the regime didn\u2019t do that either.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nAl-Aridi said the issue of the release of prisoners from the regime\u2019s jails was insisted upon in every Astana round, but the regime failed to act.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cRussia said it tried over 300 kinds of weapons on Syrian soil, which means it\u2019s very much for military action, but in the media they portray themselves as favoring a political solution,\u201d he added. \u201cIf there\u2019s any terrorism that needs to be fought, it\u2019s the state terrorism of the regime.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nHe said \u201ccunning\u201d Iran, which has \u201ca vicious plan for the region,\u201d is out to destroy the Syrian social fabric with its militias.<\/p>\n

\nBahia Mardini, a human rights campaigner and founder of Syrian House, an organization dedicated to helping Syrians in the UK, told Arab News: \u201cIt\u2019s clear that there\u2019s disagreement between the guarantor countries (Iran, Russia and Turkey) over Syria, and that the Russian-American conflict over Syria is still there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nShe urged the international community \u201cto find a real solution that will consolidate democracy and establish a future for Syria on the basis of international resolutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nShe added: \u201cWe call for an end to the suffering of the Syrians \u2026 and their participation in building and redrawing the future through a political solution that will lead to the implementation of (resolution) 2254, all relevant international resolutions and the Geneva Declaration to restore the unity of Syrian soil and heal wounds.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JEDDAH:\u00a0Two-day talks on Syria concluded on Friday in Astana, Kazakhstan, without notable progress on forming a constitutional committee to drive a political settlement in the war-torn country. A joint statement by the three cosponsors \u2014 Iran, Russia and Turkey \u2014 said the meeting had broached the issue of the constitutional committee with the UN special…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":39150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39149","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\/39149","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=39149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}