UNITED NATIONS/MOSCOW, July 27 (RIA Novosti) - Syrian opposition leaders appealed to Russia to stop its support for Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime as the country’s rebel leaders met with the UN Security Council for the first time to discuss the situation in the country plagued by a two-year war.
Syrian rebel leaders said Friday they were prepared to take part in peace talks if the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government agreed to hand over power to a transitional government.
The United States, Russia and the United Nations are trying to convene a new conference in Geneva with the participation of Assad’s government and opposition groups to try to get both sides to implement a peace plan adopted last year to end the conflict that has claimed over 100,000 lives, according to the UN estimates. Syria’s opposition has been backed by Western nations, while Assad’s government has been supported by Russia.
The opposition urged Russia to stop its support for the Syrian government, according to Ahmed al-Jarba, president of the Syrian National Coalition. He also told reporters after the meeting that the opposition has information that Russia is trying to keep the military and intelligence outside of peace talks.
"We asked them [Russia] to stop providing the political and military support for this criminal regime to continue its crimes against the Syrian people," senior Syrian National Coalition member Najib Ghadbian told reporters after the closed-door session on late Friday, Reuters reported.
The UN Security Council must require all participants at a new Geneva conference to make a commitment to implement the 2012 Geneva communique and form "a national transitional government with full executive authority, including in the military and security sectors," al-Jarba said, according to Associated Press.
Russia's UN envoy Vitaly Churkin, who described the Friday session as “useful,” said there are still “some obstacles to be overcome for the Geneva 2 conference to be convened" adding that one of them is that the Syrian opposition is "not entirely ready yet in terms of a joint unified delegation," AP reported.
