Syrian Congress of National Dialogue Agrees to Form Constitutional Committee

The United Nations special envoy to Syria, Staffan De Mistura, has said that Sochi talks over the future course of Syria have decided to create a committee that will work on a new constitution in the war-torn country. The talks, known as the Syrian Congress of National Dialogue, were held in the Russian resort town of Sochi on 29th and 30th January.

"A Constitutional Committee is to be formed, comprising the government of the Syrian Arab Republic delegation along with a wide-represented opposition delegation for drafting a constitutional reform,” UN special envoy to Syria Staffan De Mistura said.

“In your final declaration today you’ve embraced 12 principles, developed in the Geneva political process, which describes a vision of Syria, that all Syrians should be able to share.”

The Constitution Commission will be comprised of 150 delegates and the details will soon be forwarded to UN. 

The dialogue congress, according to reports, witnessed heated debate and even heckling as various stakeholders in Syrian issue engaged with each other. The congress is sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran, and the main goal of the meeting, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin is to gather “delegates from various political parties, internal and external opposition, ethnic and confessional groups at the negotiating table.”

The earlier Russian sponsored (backed by Turkey and Iran) Astana agreement in September last year had managed to reduce the intensity of violence by establishing de-escalation zones.

The event is happening days after UN-led Geneva talks took place in Vienna on the issue of Syria. According to experts, the Sochi talks, which is supported by United Nations is a viable option to rejuvenate the Geneva talks which have made little progress in ending the Syrian war that has already killed thousands and displaced around 11 million people. 

Critics argue that the while the United States and western countries have sabotaged the Geneva talks to advance their regime change goals in Syria, the Sochi talks aim to work under the ambit of security council resolution 2254 from 2015 that calls for a “Syria-led” transition. 

Earlier the Saudi Arabia backed Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC) had voted against sending a delegation to the Sochi talks. The SNC and the official Syrian delegation at the Geneva talks had been engaging through the exchange of documents via UN representative and have not met face-to-face. 

Russia had reiterated that Sochi talks are not an alternative to the Geneva talks but as a booster to the UN peace process. 

“We believe... that the Syrian National Dialogue Congress in Sochi will be able to create conditions for staging fruitful Geneva talks, taking into consideration that the part of the Syrian opposition that constantly makes preconditions, including for regime change, will be talked into sense by those who control it,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier in January.

The UN Secretary-General office on Friday in a statement said that he is confident that the dialogue in Sochi ‘will be an important contribution to a revived intra-Syrian talks process’ and will be based on the full implementation of the 2012  Geneva Communiqué and UNSC resolution 2254. 

During the congress, a group of representatives from the armed Syrian opposition refused to exit the airport in Sochi arguing that they were ‘offended by the presence of the Syrian state’s flag and emblem’.

The talks are in the backdrop of the Turkish military offensive ‘Operation Olive Branch’ in Syria’s Afrin region, which is currently under the Kurdish autonomous administration. Many fear that Turkish offensive could further complicate the political process in Syria by opening a new war front.