Inter-Syrian consultations don’t substitute for formal talks - Lavrov

MOSCOW, April 8. /TASS/. The inter-Syrian consultations in Moscow don’t substitute for the formal negotiations between the parties but create conditions for their beginning, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday. "We welcome the fact that more and more opposition groups agree with the need to search for a political platform for resolving the crisis. These days Moscow is hosting the second meeting of the Syrian opposition, a government delegation will join them a bit later," Lavrov said. "After the first meeting in January discussion moderator, head of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vitaly Naumkin outlined the principles that were not rejected by the parties, but supported on the whole." Moscow hopes that additional understandings can be reached in line with these principles. "Our goal is not to substitute for efforts to begin formal negotiations, but prepare the conditions for these negotiations to become most productive, with the widest possible representation ensured," Russia’s top diplomat said. "The Geneva Communique [of June 20, 2012] shared by all parties as a basis for resolving the crisis requires that the dialogue involve the whole spectrum of the Syrian society," Lavrov said. "The previous attempts to launch such a dialogue have failed because our Western partners and some regional countries tried to appoint representatives of just one opposition group formed abroad the only representative of almost all the Syrian people." "The disastrous nature of such approach has now been recognized de facto, and we, along with our Egyptian colleagues, are making efforts to consolidate the Syrian opposition on the platform of dialogue in accordance with the Geneva Communique," the Russian Foreign Minister said. "The result of this dialogue should be achieved on the basis of mutual accord between all opposition groups and government representatives. Let’s see how the current round of consultations in Moscow ends." Read more