Damascus Supports Russian Calls for Restarting UN-Mediated Talks in Geneva

© AFP 2023 / FABRICE COFFRINI General view of the United Nations (UN) offices in Geneva
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Damascus backs Moscow's call to resume UN-mediated talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups, President Bashar Assad said.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Syria supports Russia’s calls to restart UN-mediated negotiations between Damascus and the opposition, Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an interview with Australian television, stressing that talks so far have been held only with the UN special envoy.

"We support every talk with every Syrian party, but in reality those talks haven’t been started yet, and there’s no Syrian-Syrian talks till this moment, because we only made negotiations with the facilitator, which is Mr. de Mistura," Assad told SBS in an interview whose transcript was published by SANA on Friday.

Assad argued that direct government-opposition negotiations should start under the terms yet to be set out.

"So, we support the principle, but in practice you need to have a certain methodology that didn’t exist so far. So, we need to start, but we need to have the basic principles for those negotiations to be fruitful," he stressed.

The participants of the UN-mediated talks include the government and three opposition groups — the Riyadh-formed HNC, the Moscow-Cairo and the Hmeymim groups — to negotiation table in Geneva. After the latest round of Geneva talks held on April 13-27 the HNC withdrew citing lack of progress and numerous ceasefire violations.

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