Beirut: Moscow is trying to organise a conference in Damascus, between the Syrian government and its opponents, hoping that it will permanently replace the Geneva talks that started earlier this year and were suspended last April.
That UN-mandated process, often referred to as Geneva III, was lobbied for aggressively by outgoing US Secretary of State John Kerry.
His Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, played along quietly, but was seemingly never convinced of a political solution to the Syria crisis before battlefield victories shifted fully in favour of the regime in Damascus.
The suggested conference is backed fully by the Iranians, whose political attache in Damascus met this week with several members of the regime-friendly opposition, hinting that the conference might happen as early as next January.
Otherwise the second date is April 2017, waiting for the Trump administration officials to take office, especially his new secretary of state.
“The Russians are thinking of inviting 200 delegates from the domestic opposition and Russian-backed figures from the Cairo Declaration and the National Coordination Committees,” a Syrian politician told Gulf News.
“Russian guarantees have been given — at the highest level from the Kremlin — that attendees will be neither harassed nor arrested by Syrian authorities if they set foot in Damascus.”
The conference will be held at a hotel near Damascus International Airport, far away from the city centre.
According to him, among the suggested figures earmarked for attendance are ex-deputy prime minister for Economic Affairs Qadri Jamil, an all-time Moscow favourite, Hassan Abdul Azeem of the National Coordination Committees, and prominent human rights lawyer Haitham Manaa.
All high-profile figures of the Saudi-backed Higher Negotiations Committee have been vetoed by Moscow and Damascus, he noted, especially its chief Riad Hijab, a defected prime minister.
The tentative invitation was put forth by Iranian diplomats in Damascus, he added, during election week in the US.
In preparing for the conference, the Russians had first suggested holding it in Cairo rather than Damascus, to ensure its relative neutrality, but President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi refused hosting members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood on Egyptian territory.
Tehran suggested hosting it in Muscat, given the fact that the Omani government is the only Gulf country to maintain firm diplomatic relations with Damascus, but the Syrian government insisted on holding it in the capital.
Syrian officials have expressed their readiness to abide by UNSCR 2254 and the Vienna communique of October2015, facilitating the formation of a cabinet of national unity that is signed off by Al Assad himself, but not a Transitional Government Body (TGB) as specified by outcomes of the first Geneva talks over Syria held back in 2012.
The TGB was supposed to take power from President Bashar Al Assad and to rule Syria during a transitional period, overseeing early parliamentary and presidential elections, and the drafting of a new constitution.
The Turkish-backed Syrian National Coordination had voiced its willingness to share power with members of the Syrian regime, giving them as much as fifty per cent of seats on the TGB — if Al Assad agreed to step down.
This was flatly rejected by Moscow, Tehran, and Damascus.
Instead, they suggested a cabinet of national unity divided equally between the regime, the Moscow-approved opposition, and political independents, refusing however to relinquish powerful sovereignty portfolios like the ministries of interior, defence, economy, education, and foreign affairs.
They also insisted on keeping all security branches directly reporting to the Syrian presidency.
What they were willing to do was give the three posts of vice-president to the opposition, at a ceremonial level, provided that Al Assad gets to run in any upcoming presidential election.
His term constitutionally ends in 2021 but, according to the Syrian constitution of 2012, he still gets to run for a fourth and last term in office, which ends in 2028.
Moscow has expressed its readiness to accept early presidential elections only if Al Assad can run for another two terms.
Battlefield developments is what will make or break any forthcoming conference, whether in Syria, Oman, or Switzerland.
The Russian-Syrian military strategy is to pursue a three-way approach to the ongoing war before returning to the negotiating table in January-April 2017.
One would be to continue with the offensive to regain the rebel-held eastern part of the northern city of Aleppo, and to fully control the Damascus-Beirut highway.
When that happens, the western-backed opposition would be deprived of its last major urban stronghold.
Simultaneously, with the battle for Aleppo, the Syrian Army would continue to re-take towns and cities surrounding the Syrian capital, making sure that Damascus and its vicinity are freed from any rebel presence.
Step Three would be to quarantine all rebels fleeing war-torn cities into the city of Idlib in northwestern Syria, held by Jabhat Al Nusra and a coalition of Islamic groups since mid-2015.
Russian and Syrian media would then work on marketing Idlib as a “Syrian Kandahar” that is packed with members of Al Qaida, justifying an all-out offensive against the city once Damascus and Aleppo were secure, possibly by next Spring. The military strategy includes no clause to fight Daesh, that presently controls oil-rich Deir Al Zor on the Euphrates or the nearby city of Raqqa, the self-proclaimed capital of Daesh that is currently under attack by US-backed Kurdish militias, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces.
Nowhere in the Syrian-Russian scheme is there a clause to liberate towns and villages held by Kurdish militias in eastern Syria, leaving that fully to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who, after meeting his Russian counterpart twice this year, sent his army into the Syrian border city of Jarablus earlier this summer and plans to take others like Manbij, Azaz, and Al Bab, primarily to eject Daesh but also to break the Kurdish project on his borders with Syria.
