International envoy Lakhdar Brahimi held talks in Damascus yesterday at the end of a Middle East tour to promote a Syrian peace conference, but regional tensions have cast a pall over his mission.
Brahimi visited capitals across the Middle East to discuss plans for the Geneva 2 meeting, tentatively set for November 23, to try to halt more than two and a half years of bloodshed in Syria.
But opposition forces have not yet decided whether they will attend and Gulf Arab states backing the Syrian rebels have soured on the talks after Brahimi said on Saturday that their rival Iran, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s main regional ally, should join the international conference.
Brahimi met Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, in Damascus but there was no word on whether Assad would see him.
A senior Turkish official said the envoy has not pushed for any deal on his tour, remaining in “listening and watching mode” and leaving active negotiating to Moscow and Washington.
Riyadh and Tehran see the struggle in Syria as determining which of them ends up with greater influence in the Arab world.
Saudi Arabia threatened to distance itself from the US last week over its perceived inaction on Syria and its renewed efforts at reconciliation with Iran.
The diplomatic wrangling has made the Syrian opposition feel weaker and even more reluctant to consider attending Geneva 2.
“All these issues are getting tangled up into the other. Like the Saudis, we are very afraid that the United States’ other interests in Iran will come at the cost of the Syrian cause,” said Samir Nashar, an executive member of the Syrian National Coalition, the opposition’s umbrella body abroad.
“If you ask me, this meeting won’t happen on November 23. It won’t happen ever.”
Syria’s political opposition in exile is also facing mounting pressure from fighters on the ground to reject any negotiations that would not require Assad’s ouster.
Many of Syria’s main rebel brigades have rejected any negotiations not based on Assad’s removal and said they would charge those who attended them with treason.
Assad and Iran, however, have said they will only go to talks that set no preconditions. It is not clear how the United States and Russia, co-sponsors of the talks, can reconcile the conflicting demands of the various parties to enable to conference to convene.
The US, which backs the opposition, and Russia, a main arms supplier to Assad, agreed in May to try to arrange the Geneva 2 talks to build on an earlier meeting in the Swiss city in June 2012.