The list was expected to be agreed upon during the meeting in New York, but too many differences prevented the representatives from 17 countries from reaching an agreement.
The first hour of the meeting was hampered by the rift between the two main sides of the talks, namely Saudi Arabia and its Western and Arab allies and on the other side, Iran and Russia.
The focus of the first part of the meeting was to reach an agreement over which groups should be considered opposition and which should be labeled as terrorists. The list of terrorist organizations of Syria compiled by Jordan comprised the names of 157 groups active in Syria, including Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Mohammad Javad Zarif, Foreign Minister of Iran, reacted strongly to the inclusion of the Revolutionary Guards in the list, expressing his surprise over Jordan’s decision.
The Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, who according to a number of diplomats had been pressured by certain countries such as Saudi Arabia into including the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group, passively responded to Zarif’s protest by saying “we asked all parties involved in the Syrian situation to suggest the names of groups they believe are carrying out terrorist acts inside Syria, and the name of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps was suggested not by Jordan but another country.”
Another party opposed to the list was Turkish foreign minister who was upset that only one country had agreed with Turkey over considering the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) as a terrorist group.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also opposed the list by describing it as ‘contradictory’. He said groups that shelled Russia’s embassy in Damascus should be put on the terrorist list of Syria.
The dispute among the main participants of New York meeting over the names of terrorist groups ultimately caused the first part of the meeting to be concluded with no particular result. The only thing the parties agreed on was to determine a committee for a second cataloguing of opposition and terrorist groups of Syria.
The second part of the conference was focused on a draft resolution to be adopted as an international bid to end the nearly five-year-long crisis in Syria. The US and Russia which had already agreed on the general points of the resolution attempted to gain the agreement of the other foreign ministers of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG).
The point of dispute over the resolution was the support given to Riyadh’s recent measure in holding a meeting with Syria’s opposition groups while excluding other meetings that were held in Moscow, Vienna, Cairo, Damascus and Hasaka.
The resolution which was adopted unanimously on Friday by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) calls for Syrian peace talks on a transitional government to begin in early January, as well as a nationwide ceasefire in the war-torn country. The resolution does not address the question of Assad's future, however.
MS/3003292
Your Comment