Thin thread of hope

While the Syrian government delegation to the peace talks in Geneva rejects any discussion of the future of President Bashar Assad, opposition leaders insist he must go if a transition government is to be instated in the country, taking talks back to a stalemate that UN special envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura hopes will be broken by the US-Russian foreign ministers’ meeting.

“We are looking with great interest, expectation, hope that the talks in Moscow will be productive,” said de Mistura, after meeting the opposition High Negotiations Committee in Geneva.

He sure deserves to be commended for his perseverance. One also hopes that his persistence will pay off and will be remembered, one day not too far into the future, as instrumental to helping Syrians make peace.

Five years since the conflict in Syria started, over a quarter of a million Syrians were killed, millions were made refugees and many more were forced to leave their homes, becoming refugees in their own country.

Now that the parties to the conflict agreed to meet, de Mistura is clinging to the thin thread of hope that the untenable situation in Syria will come to an end and that the parties fighting mindlessly, or at least most of them, will arrive at some kind of understanding to stop the war and devastation.

As such, the envoy pins hopes on Russian and American help: “We always needed some help from Mr Kerry and Mr Lavrov because they proved in the past, and I hope they will prove in the future, that when they do have a common understanding, it helps enormously the process.”

Describing the matter of political transition as “the mother of all issues”, de Mistura tried to appear optimistic before the talks were adjourned on Thursday.

But with no deal signed by any of the warring parties, the situation remains precarious and diplomats are concerned that talks might fail unless headway on the matter of political transition is made soon.

Chief delegate to the Geneva talks Ambassador Bashar Jaafari does not see things that way and insists on discussing the “basic elements for a political solution”, meaning the fight against terrorism and no discussion of the political transition.

This political transition, with whatever it entails, has been the main bone of contention during peace talks on Syria in 2012 and 2014, which ended up in failure.

The deadlock on what takes priority — Assad’s fate or combating terrorism — could be resolved by taking the two issues on simultaneously.

If the parties to the talks are unwilling to compromise, as the UN envoy said, it is time for Moscow and Washington to step in before the negotiation process unravels and collapses, in which case the war in Syria, with all the bloodshed and misery it brings about, will restart.