Photo: Reuters
The UN envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen (pictured), says the Assad regime and opposition groups have agreed to begin the drafting of a new Constitution, almost four years after the initiative was announced.
Pedersen said at a Sunday news conference, “The two co-chairs now agree that we will not only prepare for constitutional reform, but we will prepare and start drafting the constitutional reform.”
The delegations have arrived in Geneva, Switzerland. They held preliminary discussions with Pedersen before negotiations begin on Monday morning.
With 50 members each from the regime, the opposition, and civil society groups, the Constitutional committee was mandated in January 2018 and first met in October 2019. However, there has been little substantive progress on an agenda, let alone details, and the 45-member drafting committee had not met since January.
Pedersen said yesterday, “We concluded that we were not making sufficient progress, and that we could not continue the way we have been working. Since then, close to nine months, I’ve been negotiating between the parties, trying to establish a consensus on how we are going to move forward.”
The Assad regime’s representatives have insisted that discussions address “sovereignty” and “terrorism” — the regime’s umbrella label for anti-Assad factions — before a new or amended Constitution is agreed.
Hadi al-Bahra, the head of the opposition delegation, said it will pursue assurances of equal rights in the new document: “Because we don’t have separation of power in the current constitution, it created an imbalance which was utilised in the wrong ways.”
Bahra said each side will put forward proposals on issues such as sovereignty and the rule of law.
Pedersen had been prone to issuing optimistic statements about a potential agreement; however, at the end of January’s talks in Geneva, he said, “I told the 45 members of the drafting body that we can’t continue like this, that the week has been a disappointment.”
See also Opposition Calls for Pressure on Assad Over Syria Constitution Talks
The envoy’s statement came as Bashar al-Assad hosted a Russian delegation led by Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, and Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin.
Syrian State news agency SANA said the meeting was about “the standing cooperation between Syria and Russia” and “coordination on the economic and commercial levels”, as well as the Constitutional Committee.
