For years since 2011, the regime and opposition extremists have been in agreement to reject dialogue, they have now been in agreement for several years to call for dialogue. However, the most important question is: what dialogue, how, about what, and for what?
On July 15, 2024, eight European ministers sent a joint letter to the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affair and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, Josep Borrell, calling on the European Union to reconsider its strategy towards Syria.
The European policy, said to be “new”, towards Syria is summed up in one clear sentence that came in the non-paper that eight European countries sent mid last month to the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. The aforementioned sentence is: “Today, a political solution in line with UN resolution 2254 seems out of reach”.
The recent non-paper on Syria that a group of European countries launched, as well as the appointment of an Italian ambassador to Syria after a long hiatus, have sparked a series of reactions.
On the outside, things appear to be stagnant in Syria in the political sense. Whether it is talking about the brakes applied against the progress of the Syrian-Turkish settlement, or about the People’s Assembly elections that passed as if they had not happened, or about the West’s formal continuation of its same policies, and other indicators that are relied upon to say that nothing has changed and nothing will change anytime soon.
The People’s Will Party (PWP) took a supportive position for an Astana-sponsored Syrian-Turkish settlement from the outset of talking about this subject in mid-2022. It is not an exaggeration to say that the PWP was among the first to ponder this idea and its importance on the pages of Kassioun even before it was announced. Despite the usual and expected attacks from the enemies of the political solution on all sides, nevertheless, the PWP continued to defend, explain, and interpret its position through a number of articles and studies.
Positive developments continue at the international and regional levels, and there are indications that they will soon be reflected on the Syrian arena. While the general tendency is still constantly moving towards further retreat of the Western powers, at the heart of which is the US, and with it the entire old world order, in parallel there is continuous progress of the rising powers that have taken significant steps in expanding their alliances as well as in working to settle regional crises that have been unresolved for decades, the Saudi-Iranian settlement being one example.
Press Statement
Moscow Platform
Representatives of the Moscow Platform for the Syrian Opposition in the Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC) - Alaa Arafat, Youssef Salman, Sami Betinjane, Mohannad Dlykan - are heading to attend the SNC's next meeting on 2-3-4 June, in Geneva. This comes after an over 3.5 year interruption in the Platform's participation in any SNC activity, as a result of several pending controversial issues, especially since an arbitrary and illegal decision was taken against the Platform. The decision was to revoke the membership of one of the Platform's representatives in the SNC and its representative to the Syrian Constitutional Committee's Small Group, Mohannad Dlykan, after calling for transferring the Constitutional Committee's work to Damascus while securing the necessary guarantees for that, a position the Platform continues to see as the correct one and continues to demand it.
On Tuesday, April 18, the Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria (AANES) published a document entitled “An initiative to solve the Syrian crisis”. Those who issued the document called on the various Syrian forces to consider it.
(The following article was originally published on geopolitika.ru website)
On Tuesday, February 14, a Russian MFA media release about a meeting between Mikhail Bogdanov, the Special Representative of the Russian President, and Kadri Jamil, one of the Syrian Opposition leaders, stated: “the Russian side stressed the need to establish practical cooperation between Damascus and Ankara in order to overcome the consequences of the earthquake on February 6.”
This statement confirms Russia’s pursuit of a Syrian-Turkish settlement, which over the seven months preceding the earthquake, was the main item on the agenda of the Astana Format (for Syria peace talks).
