BEIRUT: A leading Syria-based opposition group will allow its members to decide if they should attend a scheduled meeting later this month in Moscow aimed at encouraging a settlement to the war raging in Syria.
The National Coordination Body said it “took into consideration” Russia’s bid to foster dialogue, but said it would allow its members to decide for themselves – after reports of a sharp division over whether to attend or reject the invitations.
Opposition figures have criticized Moscow for failing to ensure that the talks would lead to tangible results.
Also, a spokesman for the group indicated that veteran dissident Hasan Abdel-Azim would stay away from the Moscow meeting if Damascus does not delegate Foreign Minister Walid Moallem to attend.
Separately, Syria’s opposition-in-exile National Coalition– which has turned down the Moscow invite – announced its endorsement of a 13-point document that stresses the need to negotiate with the regime based on the Geneva communiqué of 2012.
The so-called “Geneva formula” stipulates a move to a transitional authority with full executive powers, and with no role for President Bashar Assad.
The document says the U.N. should supervise any negotiations, and urges that they be resumed where the failed Geneva round of regime-opposition meetings in February 2014 ended.
A Coalition statement said two of its members would be traveling to Cairo for a meeting with representatives of the NCB as part of an ongoing process of “Syrian-Syrian dialogue,” with the 13-point document serving as the basis for the talks.
The NCB is sharply opposed to the foreign ties of the Coalition, based in Turkey, but the groups have been discussing ways to shore up the ranks of the opposition for several months.
The Coalition’s president, Khaled Khoja, also met with a representative of another Syria-based group whose leader was detained by the authorities last year.
The meeting between Khoja and Mona Ghanem from the Building the State opposition group took place in Istanbul, where the two “reached an agreement on the framework that can be used for a comprehensive dialogue” among opposition groups.
The head of the Building the State group, Louay Hussein, was detained at the Lebanese border last year.
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