GENEVA (Sputnik) — Direct talks between the Syrian opposition and government are unlikely at the eighth round of Geneva talks, because some members of the opposition's delegation still insist on unrealistic preconditions for the direct negotiations, negotiator from the joint opposition delegation Mohannad Dlykan told Sputnik.
"I don't think there is much hope for direct negotiations at this round. There are some obstacles. One of them is that direct negotiations have not started yet because of the preconditions that some groups of the single opposition delegation still lay down. This is now the biggest difficulty and problem," Dlykan said.
He noted that once the preconditions were dismissed, the sides would be able hold negotiations on everything, including the opposition's stance on Syrian President Bashar Assad.
"[UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan] De Mistura is trying to make some kind of progress in the negotiations by beginning direct negotiations with issues that do not make many problem. And the next stage can be going to the other topics," Dlykan noted.
On Tuesday, Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva Alexey Borodavkin noted that some members of the unified opposition delegation demonstrate a non-constructive approach to the talks by laying down unrealistic preconditions, such as departure of Assad at the very beginning of the transitional period, and removal of the Iranian military police from the Syrian territory.
"The views of the opposition groups inside the one delegation are different… Some of its members still insist on preconditions. We need to find some way out. They do not call it preconditions in Riyadh paper, but it's some kind of playing on words. This does not help," Mohannad Dlykan explained.
The unity exists on the agreement of Lausanne, which focuses on constitutional process and on the 12 principles describing the future of Syria, the negotiator from Moscow platform added.
"We are now making something like a trial run for the car. When you fix it, you need to go for 5 or 10 kilometers in a very low speed, so that it balances. If we go high speed after fixing the car, it will create problems. So we are now exactly in this run-in test. All this round is some kind of the 'periode de rodage' (trial run)," Dlykan said.
The opposition delegation solved a major issue, which is "the problem of one delegation, but there is still the problem of pre-conditions," the negotiator added.
The eighth round of Geneva talks on Syrian settlement started on Tuesday. Various groups of the Syrian opposition managed to forge a long-awaited single delegation for the Geneva-8 talks after their conference in Riyadh.
The united opposition delegation is composed of representatives from the Syrian Coalition, National Coordination Committee, Moscow and Cairo platforms, armed groups (Southern Front) and independents, 36 people in total. This delegation has appointed a team of 18 negotiators for Geneva-8 — three from each of the six groups.
The unified delegation's head Nasr Hariri said that the delegation is willing to move toward direct negotiations with Damascus.
"We want to move toward direct negotiations," Hariri told reporters on his way to a meeting with Staffan de Mistura at the UN Office.
