Russia, Iran warn world powers not to jump gun on Syria talks

MOSCOW: Russia and Iran on Wednesday warned other international players not to stymy attempts to get talks going between the Syrian government and opposition aimed at ending the war, Moscow said.
Around 20 countries and international bodies will meet in the Austrian capital Vienna on Saturday to try to push forward a peace plan that would include a ceasefire between Bashar al-Assad’s regime and some opposition groups, and talks to find a political solution.
Neither representatives of the regime or opposition are expected to attend at this stage of the dialogue.
"Outside players... must help the sides reach an agreement and not replace the intra-Syrian negotiations or try to anticipate their results," Russia’s foreign ministry said after a phone talk between Sergei Lavrov and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Russia and Iran are the strongest backers of Assad and are both involved militarily in helping his forces fight on the ground.
The US, much of the West and regional players such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey strongly oppose Assad and have called for him to go if there is to be any political resolution to the brutal four-year conflict.
Meanwhile on the ground Syria’s army broke a more than year-long Islamic State siege of a military air base in the country’s north Tuesday, scoring its first major breakthrough since Russia’s air campaign began on September 30.
Moscow’s defence ministry said the breakthrough was achieved "as a result of the actions of Russian aviation" and that "opposition" groups had helped provide information on targets, without specifying which groups.
Over the past two days Russian planes hit 277 "terrorist" targets across Syria, the defence ministry said.
Russia says it is bombing the Islamic State group and other "terrorists" in Syria, but the US and its allies have said Moscow is mainly targeting more moderate forces fighting Assad.
Meanwhile, Syrian opposition figures rejected

on Wednesday a Russian draft proposal for a process aimed at solving the nearly five-year war, saying Moscow’s aim was to keep President Bashar al-Assad in power and marginalise dissenting voices.
A draft document obtained by Reuters on Tuesday showed Moscow would like the Syrian government and opposition to agree on launching a constitutional reform process of up to 18 months, followed by early presidential elections.
Russia, which with Iran has been Assad’s top ally during the civil war, has denied any document is being prepared before international peace talks in Vienna this week.
The text, obtained by Reuters, does not rule out Assad’s participation in early presidential elections, something his enemies say is impossible if there is to be peace.
"The Syrian people have never accepted the dictatorship of Assad and they will not accept that it is reintroduced or reformulated in another way," said Monzer Akbik, member of the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition.
"The Russians are now trying to play the game they have been playing since Geneva," he told Reuters, referring to UN-led peace talks that collapsed in 2014.
Hadi al-Bahra, a member of the coalition’s political committee, said the main problem was Assad and any political process needed to tackle this with assurances and guarantees.
He also dismissed the idea of holding elections under the current system. "How can the elections be fair when the citizens inside Syria are afraid of retaliation from the security services of the regime?" he said.
Coalition member Michel Kilo said Moscow’s real aim was to preserve Assad and his state apparatus by pushing for an unfair electoral process.
"We are not against elections, we are democrats. But it cannot be that we are forced to accept a president, who is a criminal, who destroyed the country - what logic is behind this idea?" He said that if the Russians successfully pushed ahead with this idea at the next round of Vienna talks and managed to convince other countries, it would be a disaster.