Baladi News – (Mona Ali)
An observer of course of Geneva meetings can notice that Assad's regime delegation has not witnessed an essential change. However, a lot of changes have taken place in the opposition's delegation, imposed by influential states involved in the Syrian case through the UN envoy, Staffan de Mistura, rather than internal national forces.
De Mistura clearly seeks to impose what are known as "platforms" of opposition chosen by Moscow, the ally of Assad, as well as Arab states, especially the Moscow and Cairo platforms, in order to confuse the "Higher Negotiations Committee," which led the opposition's delegation and represented its center of gravity refusing to give up the demand to exclude Assad from any role in the future of Syria, which is absolutely rejected by Moscow and was abandoned by Washington and Paris, the Syrian supposed supporters of the Syrian opposition.
Commenting on the opposition's delegation to Geneva 7, Syrian political writer Muhydin Lazikani tweeted, "the opposition's delegation to Geneva is a mixture lacking harmony after dissolving the Higher Committee calling for toppling the regime within Cairo and Moscow platforms that do not mind keeping Assad's thug in power."
For his part, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov exploited the political position to confuse the matters, stressing "Moscow's support for the efforts to unite the Syrian opposition and start cooperation between the Syrian army and the opposition in the war against terrorism."
Lavrov said in a press statement on Monday that Moscow welcomes the efforts of Moscow, Cairo and Riyadh platforms to reach common positions during the Geneva peace negotiations. He said: "The High Negotiations Committee has already considered working with opponents representing the Moscow and Cairo platforms as inappropriate to them, and we now welcome with enthusiasm the new position."
The problem of the "opposition delegation" appeared concurrently with the assignment of de Mistura to deal with the Syrian case. He has worked on the escalation of this problem since "Geneva 3" the first round of negotiations after taking over the UN mediation in Syria.