Syria's opposition coalition has suspended its participation in this week's peace talks in Switzerland after the United Nations asked Iran to join the conference.
The Syrian National Coalition, the main political opposition group, said it will attend only if the invitation to Iran is withdrawn, or if Iran ends its support for the Syrian government and fully accepts an international plan adopted in 2012 that calls for a transitional government, Soner Ahmed, a coalition spokesman, said in a telephone interview today.
The UN "waited to invite Iran until after the coalition's decision to attend the conference," Ahmed said from Istanbul. "That is immoral, even in politics."
Asked if the coalition will be leaving for Switzerland tomorrow for the Jan. 22 talks, Ahmed said; "We have suspended our participation. The ball is in the UN court."
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked Iran, the foremost ally of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, to join 39 other countries at the meeting in Montreux, Switzerland on Jan. 22, in advance of negotiations between Syria's opposition and government in Geneva starting Jan. 24. The three-year conflict has killed more than 100,000 and forced millions to flee.
Photographer: Fadi Dirani/AFP via Getty Images The remains of a mortar are seen on a street of the Syrian city of Daraya, on Jan. 17, 2014.
The remains of a mortar are seen on a street of the Syrian city of Daraya, on Jan. 17, 2014. Close
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The remains of a mortar are seen on a street of the Syrian city of Daraya, on Jan. 17, 2014.
Ban said he strongly believes that "Iran needs to be part of the solution to the Syrian crisis."
"Iran said that they are committed to play a very constructive and important and positive role," Ban told reporters yesterday in New York after discussions with Iranian officials. The decision comes after extensive talks with Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Ban said.
The rebels and the U.S. said that participants at the talks must accept the conclusions of the so-called Geneva I talks in 2012, which included Russia. That communique called on the Syrian regime and opposition to establish a transitional government chosen "by mutual consent."
State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said in a statement that Iran had failed to support "full implementation" of the Geneva communique.
Psaki said the U.S. was "deeply concerned about Iran's contributions to the Assad regime's brutal campaign against its own people" and that if Iran didn't "fully and publicly accept the Geneva communique," then its invitation to the talks should be withdrawn.
Shada Islam, director of policy at the Friends of Europe policy-advisory group in Brussels, said in a phone interview that "Iran will have to be involved in the Syria talks at some point because you won't get a durable deal without Tehran."
Even so, "it's so silly not to have prepared and presented such a step in a more careful manner," he said.
The U.S. and Russia have been trying to hold the UN-backed peace conference since last year, saying the talks offer the only political solution.
Geneva II attendees will discuss establishing a transitional government with full executive powers.
To contact the reporters on this story: Richard Rubin in Washington at rrubin12@bloomberg.net; Donna Abu-Nasr in Dubai at dabunasr@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net
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