Syria's Permanent Representative to the United Nations and member of the official delegation to the Geneva II conference Bashar Al-Jaafari said that the Syrian official delegation has spared no effort to reach a peaceful political solution, credible understanding and a halt to violence, despite difficulties and obstacles.
At a press conference in Geneva, Jaafari added that the Syrian official delegation agreed on the draft agenda, submitted by the U.N. envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi. But he said the agreement raised the ire of the other side which used selective interpretations on the implementation of the agenda.
"We insisted on studying all items of Geneva communiqué elaborately to reach an agreement that paves the way for moving to the second item, but we were shocked by the other side, as it wanted to deal with the first item which is combating terrorism and discarding violence in form only,” Jaafari said.
“This is a fault in the mechanisms of negotiations giving the impression that the issue of combating terrorism is a secondary issue,” Jaafari said.
He stressed that the Syrian official delegation will spare no effort meant to make the rounds of talks successful, with open-mindedness and a positive spirit.
"We are concerned about combating terrorism as a primary demand for the Syrian people," he said.
"We looked forward to a clear commitment to combating terrorism and we wanted the coalition delegation to join us to implement a working paper that sends a message to the supporters of terrorism to stop their support."
He pointed out that Brahimi did not shoulder the responsibility of foiling the negotiations on the Syrian official side, adding that Brahimi witnessed what happened in the meetings, and that disagreement appeared only when the other side outlined its own interpretation of the agenda.
Translated and edited by The Syrian Observer
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