Syrian Peace Talks Shouldn't Be About Enabling Terrorists to Regroup

Syrian Peace Talks Shouldn't Be About Enabling Terrorists to Regroup
© AFP 2016/ Fadi al-Halabi
Politics
18:11 05.02.2016(updated 18:24 05.02.2016) Get short URL
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The Geneva talks on the Syrian settlement have been disrupted, an outcome which could easily have been predicted, according to Middle East expert Alexander Orlov. Damascus and its allies, he suggests, must not allow the US and company to use talks as a pretext to give terrorists the opportunity to regroup, resupply, and renew hostilities.

In his analysis, published in the foreign affairs journal New Eastern Outlook, Orlov took a look back at the week's events, recalling the opposition High Negotiations Committee's failure to show up for its meeting with Syrian government officials at the Palais de Nations. With this move, he wrote, the talks were effectively derailed, "even if formally they were only delayed for three weeks."
"The delegation of the Syrian opposition announced that Russia's airstrikes are undermining the efforts of the international community aimed at finding a solution to the Syrian conflict." Syria's UN Ambassador Bashar Jaafari, meanwhile, "told reporters that, just like two years ago, at the Geneva-2 negotiations…Damascus insists on the fundamental importance of the issue of the fight against terrorism." The opposition, meanwhile, "still has not submitted the lists of delegates" for the negotiations.
With the High Negotiations Committee and the State Department dropping hints that Russian airstrikes and Syrian army offensives were to blame for disrupting the talks, Orlov suggested that it seems that "lately, the statements coming out of the White House spokesman regarding the Syrian crisis lack any elementary logic." At the same time, "Washington's desperate desire to put a halt to Russia's operation in Syria is more obvious today than it has ever been."
The reality, the analyst suggests, is that "from the beginning, it has been clear that the main purpose of the negotiations, as far as Washington is concerned, has been to announce a ceasefire, giving terrorists the time and opportunity to regroup, resupply their weapons on Saudi and Qatari money through deliveries made by Turkey, and then to resume clashes with a renewed force."
Therefore, Orlov noted, "it is no coincidence that on February 4, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesperson Maj Gen Igor Konashenkov announced that intense military preparations have been spotted along the Turkish-Syrian border, which may indicate that Turkey is planning a full-scale invasion of Syria."
"We are detecting more and more signs of Turkish armed forces being engaged in covert preparations for direct military action in Syria," the spokesman had said, adding that the Russian Defense Ministry had already provided the international community with irrefutable evidence of Turkish self-propelled artillery shelling Syrian settlements in northern Latakia province.