Syria Rebels Reject UN Offer for Peace Talks

Leader of SNC Declares Talks 'Unimportant'

A letter from various rebel factions addressed to UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura has announced that the none of them will attend the next round of UN-organized peace talks.

The factions are led by the Syrian National Coalition, which itself doesn’t have many fighters, but has claimed itself to be a government-in-exile. They declared the talks “unimportant.”

Suggestions from Hisham Marwa, a top SNC official, were that the group was particularly opposed to the talks because the UN had invited Iran for the first time.

Such talks were unlikely to accomplish much at any rate, as apart from smaller, US-approved rebel factions and the SNC, most of the opposition was not invited.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.