Moscow saw vital positive development during the recent meetings of the Syrian constitutional committee in Geneva, despite not achieving significant progress, a Russian source close to the Foreign Ministry told Asharq Al-Awsat on Saturday.
“The discussions were different from the past two rounds of talks,” the source said, adding that his country is hoping to advance dialogue between the rival parties based on UN Security Council 2254.
He revealed the opposition and the government delegations engaged in debates and listened to opposing views.
“This is important progress even though a major breakthrough was not achieved during the talks,” the source stressed.
He noticed that the government advised its delegation not to offer the other side any pretext for accusing it of disrupting the dialogue, in reference to similar accusations against Damascus in the past two rounds of talks held last year.
“Moscow counts on the Syrian sides to reach, in the very near future, an agreement on specific points related to the expected constitutional amendments, mainly the distribution of powers between the different authorities,” the source continued.
He said that the issue of “hostages” is still delaying progress in those talks, adding that the government delegation does not have the authority to discuss this issue.
The source was speaking following weeklong UN-sponsored talks of the 45-member committee composed of representatives of the government, opposition and civil society, and which has a mandate to draw up a new constitution leading to UN-supervised elections.
