MESOP NEWS INTEL: LAVROV’S SECRET MEETING WITH NASR AL HARIRI / SYRIA

Russia’s Lavrov Meets Top Syrian Opposition Negotiator

23 Jan 2018 – MESOP – TASS / Trying to save Russia’s repeatedly-delayed initiative for a “national congress”, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has met the head of the Syrian opposition’s High Negotiations Committee, Nasr al-Hariri.

Lavrov portrayed the gathering, scheduled for January 29-30 in the southern Russian city of Sochi, as the start of a dialogue between Syrian factions to deal with terrorism:

The Caliphate, the goal of ISIS, has failed to materialize, but the task of crushing separate hotbeds of terrorism still remains. We expect that an advance of the intra-Syrian dialogue will help to join efforts of all Syrians to ultimately root out the terrorist threat in that country.

Russian State outlet TASS did not report any comment from Hariri.

Trying to hold the political initiative, Russia first declared the Sochi congress last autumn; however, it has been postponed repeatedly. One obstacle is Turkey’s objection to the involvement of certain Syrian Kurdish groups, including the Kurdistan Democratic Union Party (PYD), a barrier raised further by the Turkish-offensive offensive on Kurdish territory that began last Friday. Another is the Syrian opposition’s objections to any process that maintains Bashar al-Assad in power. www.mesop.de