Syria's National Coalition leaders start their first talks in Moscow
MOSCOW. Feb 4 (Interfax) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with the leaders of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces in Moscow on Tuesday.
National Coalition Chairman Ahmad Jarba and Secretary General Badr Jamous lead the Syrian delegation in Moscow.
Jamous told Interfax earlier that the opposition delegation would urge Russia to exert pressure on the Bashar al-Assad "regime so that it heads towards a political solution."
"We are friends of Russia. Yet Russia has to decide who it wants to be with, either with the people or with the government. It is impossible to support the government, which does not want to feed its people," Jamous said.
In his words, the Syrian crisis cannot be settled until it is clear there is no place for Syrian President Al-Assad in the interim government on which the sides to the conflict are supposed to agree.
Jamous called for the creation of working groups during the second round of the inter-Syrian dialogue in Geneva for dealing with technical and political issues.
"We agree, we have even proposed that technical issues, including humanitarian relief, be discussed separately from political matters. Yet we do not want to set these questions apart, we want these processes to run parallel to one another and simultaneously," Jamous said
Another National Coalition senior member, Michel Kilo, said that the Moscow negotiations would center on principles of the formation of an interim governance body in Syria.
Russia called on the Syrians to decide on the future of their country, including the formation of an interim government, on their own and repeatedly said it did not support Bashar al-Assad and his regime.
