No transitional role for Syria's Assad: Opposition

By Mohamed Sheikh Youssef

GENEVA

A spokesman for Syria’s opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC), Salim al-Muslat, denied on Saturday reports that UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura had proposed the appointment of three Syrian opposition figures as "deputies" to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a future transitional period.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, al-Muslat said that a Friday meeting between an opposition delegation and de Mistura did not include any such proposals, going on to assert that reports in the media to this effect were inaccurate.

"In talks about a transitional ruling body [for Syria], the opposition did not -- and will not -- countenance any role for Assad in the country’s future," al-Muslat said, adding that the same applied to any regime figures "who have committed crimes against the Syrian people".

A fresh round of peace talks kicked off in Geneva on Wednesday, with de Mistura still unable to provide a date for face-to-face meetings between the moderate opposition and the Damascus regime.

Regime representatives joined the talks on Friday, two days after parliamentary polls were conducted in regime-held parts of the war-torn country.

At an earlier round of talks last month in Geneva, de Mistura presented regime and opposition representatives with "basic principles" for a political solution to the crisis.

According to the UN envoy, neither side has rejected the document outright.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests -- which broke out as part of the "Arab Spring" uprisings -- with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, more than 250,000 people have been killed in Syria and more than 10 million displaced, according to UN figures.