UN special envoy for Syria plans to attend upcoming Astana meeting in Sochi

UNITED NATIONS, February 9. /TASS/. Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for Syria Geir Pedersen said on Tuesday he planned to attend the Astana format meeting (Russia, Turkey, Iran) on Syrian reconciliation, scheduled to take place in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi on February 16-17. "Yes, COVID situation permitting, my plan is to attend the forthcoming Astana group meeting in Sochi," he said, answering to a TASS question during a video conference. According to a statement, published by the Russian Foreign Ministry on February 1, Astana format members will discuss the Syrian Constitutional Committee, whose work "should be governed by a sense of compromise and constructive engagement without foreign interference and externally imposed timelines aimed at reaching general agreement of its members.". According to the UN envoy, the fifth session of the Syrian Constitutional Committee brought disappointment and became a missed opportunity. "I shared with the Council the assessment that I shared with the Committee members themselves, that session five of the Constitutional Committee was a missed opportunity and a disappointment," he said after a UN Security Council meeting on Syria, held behind closed doors earlier in the day. "I discussed with the Council what we could do to be able to create a situation where we could change the current way the Committee is working," he added. According to the UN envoy, "we do not have a workplan for the future as of yet." "While one party is proposing to work as we have done before, and the other is seeking a complete change in frequency and length in meetings, and a timeline," Pedersen continued. "I addressed the broader issues, and here my key point was the need for a constructive international diplomacy on Syria. And I am more convinced than ever that without this, it is unlikely that any track - the constitutional track or any other - will really move forward," he said. The Syrian Constitutional Committee was set up under a resolution of the January 2018 Syrian National Dialogue Congress in Sochi. The committee is comprised of 150 delegates representing the Damascus government (50 delegates), the opposition (50 delegates), and civil society (50 delegates) and is tasked with elaborating recommendations on constitutional amendments to be made before UN-brokered general elections. Earlier, the Committee set up an editorial group comprising 45 delegates (15 delegates from each of the three major groups). Read more