Any member of the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) who attends peace talks due to be held in Moscow on January 26-28 will be sacked, a senior leader of the group has warned.
Bassam Al-Malik, a senior leader of the SOC who lives in Cairo, told the Anadolu Agency that the coalition decided, in its official meeting in Istanbul, not to attend Moscow’s talks and to sack any member who does attend them.
Russia, a key ally of Syrian regime President Bashar Al-Assad, has been trying to re-launch peace talks that would include meetings between delegates of the regime and the Syrian opposition.
It has invited 28 opposition figures, including members of the Syrian opposition as well as individual coalition members to attend meetings on this issue.
The General Committee of the SOC was held in Istanbul on January 2-5 to choose a new president. At the same time, it decided to not to attend the Moscow meetings.
Moscow has invited five members of the SOC including former chief Hadi Al-Bahra, who was succeeded by Khalid Khoja on Monday, and two other previous coalition chiefs Moaz Al-Khatib and Abdulbaset Sieda.
Al-Malik said: “We refuse Moscow’s treatment of the coalition as individuals; we are an organisation that is internationally recognised. We refuse individual invitations.”
Khaled Khoja said that Moscow’s proposal was impossible. “The dialogue with the regime that Moscow is calling for is out of the question,” he said at a news conference in Istanbul.
“We cannot sit at the same table as the regime… except in a negotiating framework intended to achieve a peaceful transition of power and the formation of a transitional body with full powers,” he said.
Al-Malik said that the coalition members, who were invited to Moscow, were expected to meet on January 26 and 27. They are then due to meet with representatives of the Syrian regime on January 28 after an agreement on a united vison.