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363220
Mon, 04/13/2015 - 11:16
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Damascus sceptic about next round of intra-Syrian talks in Kazakhstan - UN envoy

MOSCOW, April 10. /TASS/. Damascus is sceptic about an initiative of moving the next round of the conflict settlement consultations, held between the authorities of the Middle East state and the opposition, to Kazakhstan, Syria’s UN envoy Bashar Jaafari said on Friday. "Some people are trying to factor out Moscow’s role," Jaafari said commenting on the recent round of the intra-Syrian consultations in the Russian capital. "An issue of holding a new round of talks either in Kazakhstan or in Burkina Faso was never discussed at the consultations. No one consulted about this issue with us." Speaking on Thursday following this week’s round of consultations in Moscow, Syrian opposition leader Randa Kassis stated at a news conference that Kazakhstan might also play a mediatory role in settling the ongoing bloody conflict in in the Middle East country. "Kazakhstan is a neutral state," Kassis, leader of the Syrian Movement of the Pluralistic Society, said. "It enjoys good relations with Syria, with members of the United Nations Security Council. I believe that Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev could receive Syrian representatives in his country." The recent intra-Syrian consultations in Moscow between April 6 and 9 were the second this year organized by the Russian authorities in a bid to find a way to the settlement of the ongoing bloody conflict in the Middle East state. The January 26-29 meetings were followed by the publication of the "Moscow principles", which in particular included Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, counteraction to terrorism and inadmissibility of outside interference. The date and the venue for another round of consultations between the official Syrian authorities and opposition forces have not been decided upon yet, according to Vitaly Naumkin, a Russian moderator to the consultations. "There is no such consensus as of yet," Naumkin, the director of the Oriental Studies Institute with the Russian Academy of Sciences, said. "The information, which was provided [at a news conference] is being studied by Russian official bodies." According to UN statistics, fighting between Syrian government troops and militants left over 200,000 people killed and displaced millions since its start in 2011. An international peace conference on Syria, dubbed Geneva-2, organized by Russia and the United States and designed to negotiate a solution to the Syrian crisis, held in January and February 2014, brought no particular progress. Read more

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