One of the Syrian rebellion’s main umbrella organizations, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), has warned that they consider it “unacceptable” for the United Nations to choose delegates for next month’s Geneva peace talks, while other rebels threatened to boycott the talks entirely without a guarantee of regime change.
The UN didn’t demand that they be allowed to choose the rebel delegation unilaterally, but rather special envoy Staffan de Mistura suggested that idea as a last resort if the rebels couldn’t agree on a delegation themselves, saying he wanted as inclusive of talks as possible.
The HNC was formed at the behest of Saudi Arabia ahead of previous talks, and while a relatively large umbrella group does exclude some noteworthy rebel factions, including a lot of purely secular factions, in favor of more moderate Islamist groups the Saudis have tended to favor.
The HNC’s leadership insists the delegation is not Mistura’s business, and noted he’d made no proposal to name the government’s delegation. Of course, the government has not struggled to come up with their own delegations and threatened to derail the talks for want of a decision.
The Geneva talks were initially scheduled for February 8, but were pushed back a month over the lack of an opposition delegation.
Guarantee of regime change = not being willing to negotiate unless you’re certain to get everything you want = not willing to negotiate.
The High Negotiation Committee is Sauri sponsored group of Syrian emigree community. I thought we learned from Chalabi experience. Or even General Hefrer experience in Libya. They are umbrella — but I am yet to find a group that is letting them do the representing. Some of the “representatives” are graduates from Soros seminars on peacefull resolution of conflict. The types of people they train are competent and skilled — but they know who is paymaster. The bottom line, in Astana, every large group represented itself — that was the rule. Now with UN in charge, who knows. If UN does not honor the wish of lesders on the ground, but cave in to High Negotiating Committee, there will be problems. And the “negotiating” committee does not want to negotiate — they want Assad to go, and them to walk into Damascus. The problem is, warlords no longer believe them, and Syrian Army is in good position to negotiate directly with warlords. The key is — those warlords ditched Al-Qaeda and packed them off on busses to Idlib. They have their local Salafi fighters, but without Al-Nusra, they are no match for Army. And Saudi games continue.. There is little indication of change in our coddling the Headchopping Kingdom.