Candidate list for Syrian constitutional committee may be agreed on soon - Putin

SOCHI, February 14. /TASS/. A candidate list for the Syrian constitutional committee may be agreed on soon, Russian President Vladimir Putin said following a Russian-Iranian-Turkish summit in Sochi. "We have been actively working together with our Turkish and Iranian counterparts, our experts from military agencies and foreign ministries held consultations with the Syrian government and opposition members. I am pleased to note that we have achieved progress," he said. Putin added that despite all difficulties, the parties continued their work. "I think we will arrive at a final result in the near future. The sooner it happens the better," he noted. When asked to comment on a letter that the envoys of France, Germany and Great Britain had written to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, which suggested rejecting all initiatives concerning the constitutional committee put forward by the Astana process guarantors, Putin said he was "surprised at the position some of our partners took on the formation of the constitutional committee because we seemed to have fulfilled all conditions and the result exceeded expectations." "I get the impression that it is nothing but an attempt to sabotage the process to create a constitutional committee though public statements are made about the need to use political methods," the Russian president pointed out. Syrian constitutional committee On January 30, 2018, participants in the Syrian National Dialogue Congress, held in Sochi, decided to establish a constitutional committee that would work on the country’s new constitution. The committee is supposed to include representatives of the Syrian government and opposition, as well as civil society members. Each of the groups will hold one-third of seats in the committee. Read more