ISTANBUL
The new president of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, also known as the Syrian National Coalition, ruled out Monday dialogue with the Assad regime.
"Dialogue with the regime is not in the agenda of the Syrian National Coalition nor other opposition groups,” Khaled Khoja said during a press conference in Istanbul.
Khoja said that the Syrian opposition will not sit at the table with the Syrian regime if power is not transferred to an interim government as agreed upon at the Geneva-1 talks.
He said that the Syrian National Coalition as an organization was not invited to the planned Moscow talks, but that the Kremlin had just invited some individual opposition figures.
The Syrian National Coalition is the largest wing of the Syrian opposition.
By 2013, at least 20 states and international organizations, including the U.S., Turkey, Germany, the EU and the Arab League, had recognized the Syrian National Coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Aleksandir Lukasevic made public Russia’s plans to mediate talks between the Syrian regime and opposition by the end of January 2015. He said that opposition representatives would be invited to Moscow first, followed by regime representatives. The Assad regime has said that it is ready for negotiations with the opposition.
More than 190,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict between the Assad regime and opposition forces began in early 2011, according to UN figures published in August 2014.
