Alwaght- Head of the Syrian government delegation to the intra-Syrian dialogue in Geneva Bashar al-Jaafari says he held talks with the UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura on informal meetings on the country’s constitution.
“During the past two days, we had extensive consultations with the Special Envoy and his team, and today we had a lengthy meeting with him in the morning. These intensive consultations resulted in an initial agreement between our delegation and the Special Envoy’s delegation, according to which an informal meeting started a few minutes ago between constitutional experts from our delegation and constitutional experts from de Mistura’s delegation,” al-Jaafari said in a press conference on Thursday.
He added that it was agreed to dub this meeting “a meeting of constitutional experts only.” Al-Jaafari said he hopes that this step will serve as a helping factor to push this round and the Geneva meetings of the Syrian-Syrian dialogue towards the seriousness that is hoped by all, “with the affirmation now and in the future that the subject of the constitution is the exclusive right of the Syrian people, and we do not accept any foreign interference.”
Meanwhile, The UN says Syria’s warring parties have agreed to set up expert committees to discuss "constitutional issues” as part of efforts to facilitate a political resolution of the deadly conflict in the Arab country.
UN mediator Staffan de Mistura's office made the announcement on Thursday.
De Mistura held a series of separate meetings with representatives from the Damascus government and opposition groups to discuss "legal and constitutional issues of relevance to the intra-Syrian talks".
The sixth round of Syrian peace talks began under the auspices of the United Nations in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday.
De Mistura has presented Syria’s main opposition bloc, the Syrian High Negotiations Committee (HNC), with a document proposing a team of civil society activists and technocrats tasked with mapping a way forward to a draft law.
A new constitution for Syria is one of the four separate topics or "baskets" on the agenda at the ongoing talks, alongside governance, elections and combating "terrorism".
Since March 2011, Syria has been gripped by terrorism and it blames on some Western states and regional allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, as being the main backers of the war on Syrian people. Several rounds of peace talks have been held in Geneva and the Kazakh capital, Astana.
The Astana talks, brokered by Iran, Russia and Turkey, have most recently produced a memorandum of understanding on de-escalation zones in Syria, sharply reducing fighting in the country.
