Roundup: Syrian politicians want understanding in Moscow meeting

A Syrian lawmaker pinned hope on the ongoing Moscow consultative meeting between the Syrian government and opposition figures, saying that understanding should be reached between the conferees as a prelude to the real dialogue.

"We as parliamentarians and Syrians wish that the consultative meeting in Moscow could reach some sort of understanding," Musab al-Halabi, a Syrian lawmaker, told reporters on Tuesday.

The four-day-long "Moscow platform" started on Monday in the Russian capital with meetings only between representatives of various Syrian opposition figures. On Wednesday, the official Syrian delegation will join the deliberations that will last till Thursday.

The current meetings in Moscow were of a consultative nature and aimed at paving the way to unleash a conference between the warring parties.

Mouna Ghanem, a member of the oppositional Building Syria State Party, said that her group has made suggestions to make the Moscow meeting a success.

She said that the solution to the Syrian crisis should start by focusing on the humanitarian situation and the political negotiations, adding that talks about the destiny of the president (Bashar al-Assad) and his remaining in power issues should be postponed to a later stage.

"We should also focus primarily on building trust by releasing the political detainees and also unleashing political freedoms and opening the horizon for the political life in Syria," she added.

Despite the hopes some politicians express, the prospects of the Moscow meeting do not seem encouraging with the absence of many opposition parties in addition to representatives of the rebel forces on ground.

Still, the Syrian government said it would exert all possible efforts to make the meetings successful.

In a recent interview with the Foreign Affairs, President Bashar al-Assad said that what is going on in Moscow is not negotiations about the solution, and it's only preparations for the conference.

"Some of the (opposition) groups are puppets, as I said, of other countries.... You have other personalities who only represent themselves; they don't represent anyone in Syria," Assad said.

"Some of them never lived in Syria, and they know nothing about the country. Of course, you have some other personalities who work for the national interest. So when you talk about the opposition as one entity, who's going to have influence on the other? That is the question. It's not clear yet," he said. Endit