Moscow Warns Syrian Opposition Against Derailing Talks With Damascus

The Syrian opposition must not put forward preconditions that could hamper the launch of intra-Syrian reconciliation talks, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said Thursday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — In December, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution on Syrian settlement, which reaffirmed the goals of the Vienna agreements to bring the entire spectrum of the 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.

"They [the Syrian opposition] will bear historic responsibility for derailing the talks because any preconditions for the launch of negotiations are unacceptable," Bogdanov, who is Russian President's Special Representative for the Middle East and Africa.

"All issues are important — humanitarian, trust-building measures — but they must not be used as precondition for the start of political process…," Bogdanov stressed.

The intra-Syria talks were scheduled to take place on January 25 in Geneva. However, UN Special Envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura told Sputnik earlier in the day that the date of the intra-Syrian talks had not been fixed.

Since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011, Geneva has already hosted two rounds of UN-brokered talks between representatives of the Syrian authorities and the opposition. The Geneva negotiations failed to yield any significant results.