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February 11th, 2016 
Awake Goy 
nsnbc : The international contact group on Syria is scheduled to meet in Munich, Germany, on Thursday. On the agenda is, among others, resolving the issues that led to the interruption of the Geneva III talks on Syria.
Head of the Syrian government delegation and Syrian UN Envoy Dr. Bashar Al-Jaafari arrived in Geneva.
The contact group reportedly aims at resolving the issues that led UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura to postponing the talks between the Syrian government, foreign-backed opposition groups, as well as foreign countries with “a stake” in the war in Syria. One of the issues that led to the interruption of the Geneva III talks was that the primarily Saudi Arabia based opposition High Negotiations Council insisted that all the provisions outlined in UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2254 should be adhered to before negotiations.
UNSC Resolution 2254 stipulates among others that there should be a ceasefire in place and that bombing of “opposition” fighters should cease. The provision and the Riyadh-based group insisting on the ceasefire and an end to air raids has been widely criticized.
Points of criticism include among others; that it would be impossible for the Syrian Arab Army to implement a ceasefire without risking that already liberated areas are being overrun by ISIS, Al-Nusrah and other radical insurgencies; that Riyadh has a primary focus on an end to Russian and Syrian air strikes while air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition are largely omitted from the discourse; that the theater of war at the current time, is so complex, that it would be impossible to adhere to a full ceasefire.
Russia will be coming to Munich with the suggestion that Syrian Kurds, that is the PYG / YPG also get a place at the negotiating table in Geneva. The PYG / YPG is a traditional ally of the Turkish Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which has received more or less covert support from Moscow and Cuba since 1986. The USA, for its part, is currently making some efforts to get the PYG / YPG on the “opposition” side. The Kurdish issue complicates matters further and elucidated the geopolitical aspects of the war.
Syria’s Chief Negotiator in Geneva and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Dr. Bashar al-Jaafari noted that the Syrian government’s delegation was not the party responsible for the failure of the Geneva III talks. DR. Al-Jaafari commented on the stalled Geneva III talks saying that the UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura did not say Geneva talks failed, but considered his decision as a suspension of the dialogue, “which did not start in the first place”. Al-Jaafari explained:
“We didn’t actually engage in dialogue neither in substance nor in terms of form. We were all the time busy handling the dangerous formality and procedural gaps, without which being tackled we couldn’t go on to the substantial part of dialogue”.
The gaps mentioned by Al-Jaafari include differences about which groups should be included in the Geneva III talks, which groups are to be designated as terrorist organizations, the absence of delegates from some groups who were expected in Geneva, and more.
F/AK – nsnbc 10.02.2016
Source Article from http://nsnbc.me/2016/02/10/contact-group-on-syria-to-meet-in-germany-on-thursday/
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