GENEVA (Sputnik) — UN Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura said Friday that he expected his talks with the delegation of the Syrian opposition formed during the Riyadh conference to start as early as on January 31.
Syrian opposition's High Negotiations Committee (HNC) reportedly announced earlier on Friday its decision to attend the Geneva talks after receiving US and UN guarantees.
"I have good reasons to believe that they are actually considering that very seriously. And therefore to be in a position to probably Sunday to actually start the discussions with them in order to be able to proceed with intra-Syrian talks," de Mistura commented on the announcement.
However, the official noted that there had still been no official confirmation of the opposition attending the talks.
"As you can imagine I’ve been hearing a lot of rumors and information already… I have reasons to believe, but I will only react when I have a formal indication of that, but that is a good signal," the UN envoy said.
Later that month, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution on settling the Syrian conflict, which reaffirmed the goals of the Vienna agreements to bring the entire spectrum of political groups in the crisis-torn country to the negotiating table and stated that the next round of the talks would take place in January, 2016.
Deputy head of the Syrian opposition delegation at the intra-Syrian talks in Geneva, George Sabra, said Thursday the delegation would not travel to Geneva to attend the beginning of the talks on January 29.
Meanwhile, earlier in the day a member of the political bureau of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces told Sputnik that the opposition delegation would only participate in the talks with the government if the UN Security Council resolution on Syrian reconciliation was implemented.
