Geneva II, a high-profile peace conference for Syria organized by US and Russian officials, was supposed to be held in June. Though it never happened, Syrian Deputy PM Qadri Jamil today reported that the conference will be held on November 23-24.
Jamil said the date is what UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told him, but US and Russian officials insisted that the date hasn’t been finalized yet, so that may just be speculative.
Secretary of State John Kerry has been pushing the international community to set a date for Geneva II, and has suggested the goal is to appoint a “transitional” government made up of rebels.
But getting that done might not be easy, as while the Assad government has agreed to attend the conference, none of the myriad rebel factions have said they’ll attend, and many have ruled it out. Western nations are expected to press hard for rebel involvement, if only for appearance’s sake, but without them the conference seems unlikely to accomplish much.